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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2014
It is often argued that if one holds a liberal political philosophy about individual rights against the state and the community, then one cannot consistently say that a state that violates those principles is owed the right of noninterference. How could the rights of the collective trump the rights of individuals in a liberal view? I believe that this debate calls for more reflection, on the relation between liberalism and individualism. I will sketch a conception of liberalism (“liberal associationism”) in which there is nothing awkward about saying that associations, as such, have some moral (not just, say, legal) rights to noninterference. If liberal associationism is compelling in general terms then, if states (or some of them) can be shown to be associations in the relevant respects, then liberalism itself will supply the moral basis for a right of that kind, held by a state or people as such, to nonintervention.
I have benefitted from presenting versions of this paper to a number of people and audiences over several years. Thanks to Nomy Arpaly, Corey Brettschneider, Bob Goodin, Charles Larmore, Jakob Reckhenrich, Leif Wenar, and audiences at the Political Philosophy Workshop at Brown, the NEH Summer Institute at Washington University, the American Political Science Association, the Political Theory Research Seminar at Oxford, the graduate student workshop at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the University of Virginia, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, the Australian National University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Arizona.
1 I do not imagine that the Kazans are from Kazanistan. The verbal similarity is meant rather to suggest a parallel.
2 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.
3 Pogge, Thomas, “An Egalitarian Law of Peoples,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 23, no. 3 (1994): 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 See, especially, Beitz, Charles, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, and Pogge, Thomas, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
5 Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 221, note 8Google Scholar.
6 Rawls, John, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” in Political Liberalism, expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 476Google Scholar or in The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 166Google Scholar. There are subtleties here of some exegetical interest, such as the fact that the later passage describes “political liberalism,” Rawls's own innovation, whereas the earlier one speaks more generally (and, so, strikingly) about “liberalism” as such. It is implausible to think there's some change of view here. In Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls is unremitting on this point by nearly always referring to “persons and associations” rather than merely to “persons.” See at least Political Liberalism, 16, 19, 41, 129, 136, 225, 266, 268–69, 276, 284, 302, 517.
7 See Gray, John's review of Rawls's Political Liberalism “Can We Agree to Disagree?” in New York Times Book Review (May 16, 1993), 35Google Scholar and Thomas Nagel's critical letter (June 6, 1993). Nagel writes, “… Mr. Gray's mind is a remarkably blunt instrument: anyone who can describe Hobbes, that great opponent of all limitations on government power, as a liberal has a very poor grasp of the fundamentals of political theory.” For the above reasons, this strikes me as unfair.
8 There is a complication, as an interpretive matter, since Rawls says at one point that we can see the parties to the OP as “heads of families.” A careful reading of the passage shows that it has nothing to do with justice within the family, the justice of the family in the basic structure, the rights of the family to noninterference, or any of the related issues. Rawls says, “It is not necessary to think of the parties as heads of families, although I shall generally follow this interpretation. What is essential is that each person in the original position should care about the well-being of some of those in the next generation….Thus the interests of all are looked after and, given the veil of ignorance, the whole strand is tied together.” (Rawls, Theory of Justice, 129. It is slightly different in the revised edition but not relevantly for our purposes.) There are diachronic and synchronic concepts of family. The synchronic concept of family refers to people in certain relations to each other at the same time. The diachronic concept of family refers to the relationships of ancestors and descendants living at different times. Rawls clearly has the diachronic concept in mind, whereas the thought that this “heads of families” move would make the theory nonindividualistic at the justificatory level employs the synchronic concept of family: members living together or at least at the same time. Families in the diachronic sense are not associations or social units of any kind. I conclude that Rawls's view is indeed individualistic at the level of justification.
9 See a survey and critique of some who dispute it in Gutmann, Amy, “Communitarian Critics of Liberalism,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, no. 3, (1985): 308–22Google Scholar.
10 Rawls, registers this worry in the original published lecture, “The Law of Peoples,” Critical Inquiry 20 (1993): 55CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I find no similarly clear statement of the point in his book, Law of Peoples, although it seems to be indicated at p. 70, “… an original position argument for domestic justice is a liberal idea, and it does not apply to the domestic justice of a decent hierarchical regime.” It would follow from this that OP reasoning, since it represents individuals as free and equal, is not available to a public reason shared by nonliberal peoples who (not unreasonably in this larger context) do not share that view of individuals. That would rule out the availability of a COP. The quotation should not be taken to indicate that justice is relative to a society's views. Rawls also says, “[I believe] a liberal constitutional democracy is, in fact, superior to other forms of society.” (Law of Peoples, 62)
11 The original position idea is used by Rawls three times, the third being the extension of the law of peoples to the case of nonliberal peoples. That phase will not matter for my purposes, and it can be seen as a second use of what I am treating as the second original position.
12 See Section VI below.
13 This approach is pursued by a number of authors, including, as noted earlier (in note 5) Beitz and Pogge.
14 See Wenar, Leif, “Why Rawls is Not a Cosmopolitan Egalitarian,” in Rawls's Law of Peoples: A Realistic Utopia, ed. Martin, Rex and Reidy, David (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 95–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an interpretation of why Rawls rejects a COP.
15 Beitz, raises this objection in, “Rawls's Law of Peoples,” Ethics 110, no. 4 (2000): 686CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 This is not a claim about how the term “human rights” is best defined, but only a point about the structure of the points I have been making. I take no position in this essay about what should or should not be called “human rights.”
17 See for example, Simmons, A. John, Moral Principles and Political Obligation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), chaps. 3 and 4Google Scholar.
18 The case is similar to the cases Harry Frankfurt uses to suggest that a person can be responsible for an action even if she could not have done otherwise, so long as she did not (in the relevant way) want to do otherwise anyway. Family members are not being forced to stay simply because they could not leave. It may be that they do not (in the relevant way) want to leave anyway, and so stay voluntarily. See Frankfurt, , “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person,” Journal of Philosophy 68, no. 1 (1971): 5–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 As for the idea of cooperation being willing even if not voluntary, in Political Liberalism, Rawls writes, “… while social cooperation can be willing and harmonious, and in this sense voluntary, it is not voluntary in the sense that our joining or belonging to associations and groups within society is voluntary. There is no alternative to social cooperation except unwilling and resentful compliance, or resistance and civil war” (p. 301).
20 According to Klinenberg, Eric, just under forty million adults in the United States live alone, which is under twenty percent. Living alone is less common in the developing world. See, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal (New York: Penguin Books, 2012)Google Scholar.
21 If it is thought that it is Stan's ownership of the house that explains Nan's lack of a right to invite interference, change the example to a cooperatively owned house by a set of close friends. The state may not, I assume, fine them for sexist rules even if some members would welcome this. Granted, I am only claiming this applies so long as Nan and others stay voluntarily (whether or not they came voluntarily, or could leave if they chose). But I am also only claiming the parallel thing for states that, whether or not they are just, are willing associations in a similar sense.
22 See Mandle, Jon, “Tolerating Injustice,” in The Political Philosophy of Cosmopolitanism, ed. Brock, Gillian and Brighouse, Harry, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 219–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 I briefly discuss this issue in, “The Survival of Egalitarian Justice in John Rawls' Political Liberalism,” Journal of Political Philosophy 4, no. 1 (1996): 68–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.