Paul M.

Nguyen (OMV) Contemporary Philosophy, OConnor October 3, 2011 Essay Response to Lecture III Political Liberalism, John Rawls After laying out political constructivism, by way of rational intuitionism and Kant's moral constructivism, Rawls identifies what he considers the criteria for a conception of objectivity (CO) with respect to the three schools. He then claims that the five criteria he gives are essential, and also sufficient for a CO. That is, the satisfaction of the five criteria is indicative of a CO, and vice versa. He begs the question: what is a conception of objectivity? Or how does it affect a political conception of justice? He does claim that reasonability, rather than truth, is, in fact, the enduring conception of objectivity in a stable society regulated by the politically-constructed conception of justice reached through the overlapping consensus, identified in the original position, in a society containing a plurality of reasonable comprehensive doctrines (RCD). A conception of objectivity, then, seems to be some metric or standard by which the strength or applicability of a political conception of justice may have, viz., to what extent it has effect in that society. The CO (1) must specify an order of reasons assigned to agents, yet (2) distinct from any of their views, via a (3) public deliberative process (4) seeking the reasonable (or the true), and (5) be agreed upon by such reasonable agents. Let us apply these criteria to what we witness in modern American society. Perhaps this is how John Rawls began his own investigation, though he has not, as of yet, identified it as such. The question, then, is whether our legal system, constructed politically, also constitute a conception of objectivity, according to Rawls' description thereof. The criteria expressed in (4) and (5), that reasonable agents agree in their pursuit of the reasonable, seems to agree, at least in

name, with the formal legislative process in this country. Legislators claim to seek to incorporate into the constitutional democracy those permissions and prohibitions that are agreeable to all and that they can expect all to follow. Whether statistical analysis of the benefit and adherence of society to actual legislation is an entirely different study. The criterion of the public deliberative process (3) is surely present; debates in both houses of congress are held, televised, and their documents published and widely available on the Internet, for those who wish to investigate them, so we can say that the process is deliberative and certainly public. It seems that a snag in the arguments catches on the necessity to (1) specify an order of reasons assigned to agents, yet (2) distinct from any of their views. The order of reasons is seen in the various legislation and the consequences for their violation. However, the requirement of distinction seems far from satisfied. That is, as much as constituents may express their views to their representatives (assuming they are reasonable), it seems often times that representatives choose an alternative that conflicts with so many of its members that the stability of society with respect to that issue is damaged. Of course, the judicial system may then return to a higher order of reasons (the Constitution) to determine the rationality (accordance with an end we should seek) of what was thought to be at least reasonable (acceptable to all) by the legislative representatives. In this sense, the complete governance of the United States does provide a mechanism by which only reasonable (and objective?) principles of justice will obtain. Rawls closes this lecture and the discussion of objectivity with the assertion that the idea of the reasonable is more suitable than moral truth, and that holding a political conception as true [is] likely to foster political division (p. 129). Here, he attempts to bolster his esteem for the reasonable while a few sentences earlier, he declared that a sound political conception of justice is obtained if one of [the citizen's] doctrines should be true (p. 128).