Reply to Professor Klosko

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1 Res Publica (2015) 21: DOI /s REPLY Reply to Professor Klosko Paul Weithman 1 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 In Rawls, Weithman and the Stability of Liberal Democracy (Klosko 2015), George Klosko contends that I overstate the significance of some of John Rawls s philosophical achievements in my book Why Political Liberalism? (Weithman 2010). I can most clearly identify the points on which Professor Klosko and I differ if I lay out his line of thought in a series of steps. On my reading, Professor Klosko s critique proceeds as follows: 1. Professor Klosko opens his critique by distinguishing a number of sub-areas within the discipline of political philosophy to which he says Rawls contributed: social contract theory, the theory of distributive justice, the methodology of moral philosophy, and liberal democratic theory (Klosko 2015, p. 235). He then indicates that he will focus on what I say about Rawls s contributions to the last of these sub-areas, and will show that it is those conclusions whose significance I have overstated. 2. The claims in which Professor Klosko says I overstate Rawls s contribution to liberal democratic theory are the conclusions of a philosophical and interpretive argument. Professor Klosko observes that my analysis of Rawls s treatment of stability is central to that argument (Klosko 2015, p. 236). He then distinguishes political stability from the kind of stability he says I claim Rawls is interested namely, the ability of a regime to generate its own support and zeroes in on what he thinks I say about stability of that kind. 3. Professor Klosko says that my analysis contrasts societies in which stability is imposed, such as societies stabilized by a Hobbesian sovereign, with a society & Paul Weithman weithman.1@nd.edu 1 Glynn Family Honors Collegiate Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA

2 252 P. Weithman which enjoys what Rawls calls inherent stability namely, the well-ordered liberal democracy of Rawls s Theory of Justice. And he says I conclude that Rawls has made a tremendous contribution to liberal democratic theory by showing that such a society is possible. 4. But, Professor Klosko contends, the way my analysis proceeds, and my move from that analysis to my conclusion about Rawls s contribution, depend crucially upon the assumption that the distinction between imposed and inherent stability is mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. That assumption is false. Had I seen that it is false, I would not have slid illicitly from a conclusion my analysis warrants namely, that Rawls s well-ordered society is an alternative to societies in which stability is entirely imposed to the false conclusion that it is the only alternative. Instead, I would have attended to the range of alternatives which enjoy a combination of imposed and inherent stability, such as many of the societies of our world. Some of these existing societies have borne th[e] label [ liberal democracy ] for scores of years (Klosko 2015, p. 237; see also p ). So if I had seen that my crucial assumption is false, I would not have claimed that it was Rawls s treatment of stability which showed the possibility of a liberal democracy in which stability is not imposed. I would have noted instead that actuality has demonstrated that possibility long since and, having seen that, I would not have reached the conclusions I did about the magnitude of Rawls s contribution to liberal democratic theory. 5. Identifying the false assumption on which my analysis is premised opens the way for a more accurate assessment of Rawls s contribution to liberal democratic theory. For Professor Klosko says that an accurate assessment depends upon the likelihood of the [well-ordered society] as Rawls describes it and upon the extent to which existing liberal democracies approximate the ideal. Rawls s contribution will, he thinks, be shown to be much less significant than I claim if the well-ordered society is extremely unlikely ever to be realized and/or if societies with which we are familiar already significantly approximate it (Klosko 2015, p. 246). Identifying the false assumption also raises questions about Rawls s case for his two principles. For according to Professor Klosko, one of Rawls s main arguments for justice is fairness is that it contributes more effectively to a society s stability than rival princilples do or can (Klosko 2015, p. 239). But since this argument itself rests on the assumption that the imposed/inherent distinction is exclusive and exhaustive, Rawls s stability argument for his principles is flawed. 6. Professor Klosko concludes that we should turn from a contrast between Rawls and the dark minds [who thought stability had to be imposed] and take a hard look at the possibility of the [well-ordered society] and carefully consider putative liberal democracies and how they work (Klosko 2015, p. 248).

3 Reply to Professor Klosko 253 To lay out Professor Klosko s sequence of thought is not, of course, to lay out his arguments for the steps in that sequence. But the step-wise exposition of his critique serves to identify the most important points at which Professor Klosko and I part ways, since I disagree with him at each step. In explaining my disagreements, I shall largely avoid the question of whether Professor Klosko s reading of my book is correct or whether there are passages which support it. For the real interest of his challenge lies in the exegetical questions he poses about Rawls and, even more, in the important philosophical issues he raises by posing those questions. I am grateful to him for the time and attention that he has given my book, and for the opportunity he has given me to say what I think about those issues and questions. The breadth of our disagreement should not be allowed to obscure the depth of the gratitude. Step (1): Distributive Justice and the Theory of Liberal Democracy I believe that Professor Klosko is mistaken to open his critique by distinguishing Rawls s contributions to the theory of distributive justice from his contributions to liberal democratic theory. Rawls wanted to identify and defend principles of distributive justice which he claimed the basic structure of an ideally just liberal democracy would satisfy. 1 Though a third of Theory of Justice is devoted to institutional questions, Rawls insisted that he took up those questions to lend further support to his principles, rather than from an interest in liberal democratic institutions as such (Rawls 1999c, p. 168). It would therefore be more accurate to describe Rawls as contributing to liberal democratic theory by contributing to the theory of distributive justice, than to imply that he contributed to two distinct areas of inquiry. Descriptive accuracy matters. For if we isolate Rawls s contribution to liberal democratic theory from his contributions to the theory of distributive justice, as Professor Klosko s opening distinctions encourage us to do, we may forget that his contribution consisted in the identification of moral principles. Moral principles are principles which are capable of moving us to compliance for its own sake. They are also, Rawls thought, principles such that when we take them as regulative, we realize moral or for the Rawls of Political Liberalism (Rawls 1996, p. 77) political autonomy. Since Rawls wanted to contribute to liberal democratic theory by identifying such principles, he was not primarily interested in the possibility or the preconditions of any society which might have some claim to be called a liberal democracy. He was interested, in the first instance, in the possibility of a liberal democracy whose citizens adhere to basic distributive principles autonomously. As we shall see when I consider step (3), this interest leads naturally to Rawls s interest in showing the possibility of a liberal democracy which is characterized by a certain privileged kind of stability. To see what kind of stability Rawls had in mind, we need to see what is stabilized and to divide the conceptual terrain differently than Professor Klosko does at step (2). 1 See Cohen (1989, p. 734, n. 23).

4 254 P. Weithman Step (2): What is Stabilized? Professor Klosko writes: As the term is used in its traditional sense, a regime is stable if there is an absence of extra-legal political opposition. For ease of reference, I will refer to stability in this sense as political stability. What Rawls has in mind is quite different: a regime s ability to generate its own support (Klosko 2015, p. 238). The first sentence of this passage makes clear that Professor Klosko thinks stability attaches to a regime, though as I mentioned when I described step (5) in my opening remarks, he also predicates it of society. Professor Klosko does not say what a regime is. If we take it to be set of social institutions including, and perhaps limited to, a society s governing apparatus, then the stability of a regime and the stability of society may have much the same conditions. In that case, the difference between the two predications may be inconsequential. Since interpretive charity seems to require making the difference inconsequential, I shall read Professor Klosko as thinking that stability is institutional stability, of which he thinks political stability and the stability Rawls has in mind are two species. But Rawls predicates stable and its cognates not of a regime or a set of institutions, but of a conception of justice. A conception of justice is stable if it wellorders a society over time, so that its principles serve as that society s mutually accepted public basis for justifying the distribution of benefits and burdens of social cooperation. If the stable conception is Rawls s, then the society well-ordered by it will be stably just. 2 Clearly the stability of a conception of justice, and the stable justice of the society the conception well-orders, are compatible with significant institutional change, as Rawls himself recognizes (Rawls 1999c, p. 401). So the stability Rawls has in mind attaches to a quite different subject than does the stability Professor Klosko says he has in mind. A clear indication of this difference is that Rawls never speaks of a regime s ability to generate its own support. Rather, in a passage to which we shall return, he says it is a strong point in favor of a conception of justice that it generates its own support (Rawls 1999c, p. 154, emphasis added). Step (3): The Possibility of Autonomy The distinction between imposed and inherent stability, which I drew following Rawls, is introduced into the critique at step (3). Though Professor Klosko does not say so explicitly, I assume he thinks that this is a distinction within the species of stability he thinks Rawls has in mind, and so thinks this is a distinction between two ways in which a regime can generate its own support. And so I assume he thinks that a regime can generate support by the use of absolute power to impose order, or that it can do so by meeting what Professor Klosko says are the two conditions of inherent stability: it can instill the necessary dispositions in most 2 The phrase stably just is Cohen s; see Cohen (1989, p. 744).

5 Reply to Professor Klosko 255 citizens, and [encourage a] sense of justice [which is] sufficiently strong to outweigh countervailing tendencies. If we read Rawls as thinking of stability as attaching to regimes, and of regimes as generating their own support, it will be natural to ask as Professor Klosko does why Rawls does not consider other, hybrid ways in which a regime might stabilize itself. I shall return to the mutual exclusivity and joint exhaustiveness of the imposed/inherent distinction when I consider step (4). First I want to draw out the implications of reading Rawls differently than Professor Klosko does, as I have in considering steps (1) and (2). In considering step (2), I said that Rawls thinks stability attaches to conceptions of justice, and that a condition of their stability is that their principles are adhered to over time as a public basis for justifying distributions. In considering step (1), I said that those principles are moral principles and that a condition of their being so is that they be such that citizens can adhere to them autonomously. Conjoining what I have said about (1) and (2): Rawls is interested in the possibility of a liberal democracy in which principles of justice are adhered to over time by citizens who, in adhering to them, act autonomously. To show that such a society is possible, Rawls first imagines a social contract in which citizens give principles of justice to themselves as free and equal rational beings, and then shows how the conception of justice to which those principles belong could generate its own supportive moral attitudes (Rawls 1999c, p. 350) when it is publicized and satisfied by institutions citizens would give themselves in the four-stage sequence (Rawls 1999c, pp ). When a conception generates its own support in this way, stability is intrinsic to it or inheres in it. It is inherently or intrinsically stable. 3 Thus in contrast to Professor Klosko, I do not read Rawls as saying that the achievement of inherent stability is one of at least two ways in which a regime can generate its own support. Rather, I read him as saying that a conception of justice is inherently stable if and only if it generates its own supporting attitudes in citizens via processes that are open to view (Rawls 1999c, p. 452) and institutions they would give themselves. And I read him as saying that in a society which is well-ordered by a reasonable conception that enjoys this kind of stability, citizens who act from its principles act autonomously. I do think that Rawls made a tremendous contribution to liberal democratic theory by showing that such a liberal democracy is possible. To appreciate the magnitude of that accomplishment, note first that because Rawls s principles of justice are the objects of collective choice in the original position, they and the institutions which satisfy them are collectively rational (Rawls 1999c, p. 497). It is, however, a distressingly familiar fact that principles which are collectively rational are not always individually so. The result, as David Lewis once observed, is that Prisoners Dilemmas are deplorably common in real life (Lewis 1979, p. 240). To show that principles agreed to in the original position could be honored over time, Rawls had to show that the agreement on them would not be undone by a generalized prisoner s dilemma. To show that, he had to show that it could be rational for each citizen in his well-ordered liberal democracy to adhere to the 3 The phrase intrinsically stable occurs at Rawls (1999a, p. 106).

6 256 P. Weithman principles. To show that, he had to show that each could face a payoff table in which the rewards of adherence exceed those of defection. And to show that each person could adhere not just rationally but also autonomously, he had to show that the higher payoff of adherence was not the result of penalties which would render compliance with the demands of justice at least partially heteronomous. Rawls showed all this by means of elegant and ingenious psychological discussions that distinguish two theories of goodness, and that treat of social learning, the stages of moral education, the good of community and the congruence of the right and the good. Those discussions culminate in Rawls s arguments that citizens who grow up under justice as fairness would develop a sense of justice together with the associated moral and natural sentiments, would regard the payoffs they could gain from violating principles of right as being without value (Rawls 1999a, 106), and would therefore judge that it is good to be just. Professor Klosko thinks that if I am right about Rawls s concern with avoiding prisoner s dilemmas, then Rawls must retain an interest in stability in the traditional, political sense (Klosko 2015, p. 239). That is the kind of stability that Professor Klosko distinguishes from the kind of stability he thinks Rawls had in mind, namely a regime s ability to generate its own support. On the contrary, I think Rawls s attempt to show how a prisoner s dilemma can be averted illustrates how he thinks justice as fairness generates its own supportive moral attitudes and so contributes to his larger argument that justice as fairness would be inherently stable. I stand by the claim that these arguments, which depend upon showing how it is possible to avert the threat of a pervasive collective action problem in the very important case of distributive principles is a tremendous contribution to liberal democratic theory. 4 Step (4): Alternatives to Imposition and Inherence It is obviously possible for terms of cooperation presumably including conceptions of justice to enjoy a kind of stability which is neither purely imposed nor purely inherent. Indeed, many and perhaps all societies in our world seem to secure compliance with their laws and constitutions by relying on some combination of coercion, moral support and the cooptation of elites (Gilley 2006). It is precisely because we are relatively perhaps entirely unfamiliar with cases of purely imposed and purely inherent stability that the possibility of both needs to be argued for, though Rawls argues only for the latter. 5 Why treat the distinction between imposed and inherent stability as if it were mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive when it obviously is not? 4 Another way to describe Rawls s accomplishment would be to say that he has (1) designed a contract situation in which intuitively plausible distributive principles would be agreed to and (2) shown that the agreement reached in that situation would be self-enforcing. I take this accomplishment to be significant because the problem of designing self-enforcing agreements which implement socially optimal outcomes in important cases is a decidedly non-trivial problem. I consider this way of characterizing Rawls s accomplishment in Weithman (2015). 5 For a rigorous and imaginative argument for the possibility of the former, see Kavka (1983).

7 Reply to Professor Klosko 257 I treated it that way because the Rawls of Theory of Justice seemed to do so (Rawls 1999c, pp ) and I wanted to be faithful to his text. I believe Rawls treated it that way because a sharp contrast between inherent and imposed stability helps to throw the characteristic features of the former into clear relief. For example, Rawls s association of imposed stability with Thomas Hobbes, together with the power and prominence of game-theoretic analyses of Hobbes s Leviathan, suggest quite clearly that Rawls thought of imposed stability as one way of averting the threat of the generalized person prisoner s dilemma (Kavka 1986; Hampton 1986; Rawls 2007, pp ). The contrast between imposed stability now understood in this way and the description of justice as fairness as inherently stable, together with the stark contrast between the two kinds of stability, invites attention to the very different way Rawls averted that threat. As I indicated in considering step (3), I think Rawls s argument that justice as fairness can avoid the threat of a generalized prisoner s dilemma is a significant intellectual accomplishment. Since the opposition of imposed and inherent stability draws attention to that accomplishment and greatly facilitates its clear explanation, I believe the sharpness of the contrast is illuminating. But I do not think that my claim about the magnitude of Rawls s contribution requires the simplifying assumption that the imposed/inherent distinction is mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive, as Professor Klosko alleges at step (4). As I implied when considering step (2), Rawls was not interested in establishing the possibility of liberal democracy simpliciter or in establishing the possibility of societies which are sufficiently liberal and democratic to merit the labels. His primary interest was in the possibility of a liberal democracy in which citizens honor principles of justice autonomously. That, as I stressed when considering step (3), is why he tried to show the possibility of a kind of liberal democracy that I believe he took to be ideal one that is well-ordered by a conception of justice is inherently stable. Citizens who adhere to principles of justice out of some combination of moral and prudential reasons for example, citizens of a society whose conception of justice is stabilized in part by coercion are not fully autonomous. The fact that existing regimes even existing societies which we intuitively judge to be liberal democracies combat destabilizing factors through combinations of inherent and imposed stability (Klosko 2015, p. 237) therefore does not show what Rawls wanted to show, nor should it lead us to reassess the significance of his having shown it. Taking those regimes into account, and blurring the inherent/imposed distinction, would not have changed the conclusion of the argument. What my claim about the magnitude of Rawls s contribution does require is the assumption that showing the possibility of a liberal democracy well-ordered by inherently stable terms of cooperation is both difficult and important. Once we see the demands of inherent stability, and the threats to stability that must be averted, we can see the difficulty of the task Rawls set himself. 6 But what of its importance? On p. 245, Professor Klosko suggests that Rawls s well-ordered liberal democracy is qualitatively superior to existing liberal democracies because in 6 See also Rawls (1999a, p. 106).

8 258 P. Weithman the former, citizens live together on terms of genuine cooperation, without having this imposed from above. I take Professor Klosko to mean that Rawls s society is qualitatively superior because in it, citizens honor the terms of cooperation with complete freedom a claim I would put more strongly by saying that the kind of freedom they realize is what the Rawls of Political Liberalism called full political autonomy (Rawls 1996, p. 402). I think Professor Klosko is correct to imply that such a society would realize a very great good, because I think full political autonomy is a desirable kind of freedom, appropriate for the self-governing societies which liberal democracies are supposed to be. Professor Klosko thinks it is clear that if Rawls s well-ordered society is indeed qualitatively superior to existing societies, then establishing this possibility would be a major accomplishment (Klosko 2015, p. 245) Perhaps Professor Klosko is right that this is clear, but it may still be worth reviewing briefly why establishing the possibility is important enough to qualify as an accomplishment: 1. One reason it could be important is that Rawls s well-ordered society might not just be qualitatively superior to existing societies but might also be adopted as a goal of their reform because of its superiority. In that case, it would be important for those who are trying to realize the ideal to know that doing so is possible, so that they know their efforts are not doomed to failure. 2. A reason that it is important for Rawls s project, about which I shall say more in Step (5): Is the Well-Ordered Society either Realistic or Utopian?, is that considerations of stability support the choice of Rawls s two principles in the original position. 3. A third reason, stressed by Rawls in writings from Political Liberalism onwards, is that our sense of what is possible in political and social life affects our attitude toward our fellow human beings and toward the world we share with them. (Rawls 1996, pp. lxi lxii) I believe what Rawls has in mind is roughly this. To show the possibility of the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is to show the possibility of a liberal democracy which is well-ordered by an inherently stable conception of justice. As we have seen, establishing this possibility entails showing that human beings who live under ideally just institutions can develop an effective desire to act from principles of justice and can shape conceptions of their good which give that desire a central place, so that they do what is necessary to preserve it. That is, it entails showing that human beings are amenable to moral formation on which inherent stability depends, so that in the right circumstances at least, we can do justice of our own volition. We might say: it entails showing that we can cultivate and act from a good will. Establishing the possibility of well-ordered liberal democracy therefore shows us something about ourselves and our moral possibilities. 7 Indeed, I believe Rawls thought that establishing the possibility shows that faith in the goodness of humanity is reasonable faith. It therefore allows us to see our 7 Rawls says of Kant In his moral philosophy, Kant seeks self-knowledge (Rawls 2000, p. 148). I believe he would say the same of himself.

9 Reply to Professor Klosko 259 kind in a different and more favorable light than we would if we denied the possibility, as history may tempt us to do. 8 Though I cannot go into the differences here, we can get some idea of them by comparing the view of our psychological and moral nature that emerges from Rawls s work with that embraced by twentieth-century realists whose views are shaped by, even if they are not identical to, those of Hobbes or Augustine. 9 I believe these differences in the way we view ourselves and our political possibilities are significant. For they affect how we relate to others, what kind of a society we can sensibly hope and strive for, and though I cannot go into it here what gives just action its point. If this is correct, then establishing the possibility of well-ordered liberal democracy is important enough to qualify as the major accomplishment that Professor Klosko agrees it would be. Step (5): Is the Well-Ordered Society either Realistic or Utopian? Of course it would be a mistake to credit Rawls with such an accomplishment if he had not in fact established the possibility he was concerned to establish. It would also be a mistake to credit him with it if that possibility did not need to be established because Rawls s well-ordered liberal democracy is so closely approximated by some of the putative liberal democracies (Klosko 2015, p. 248) of our world that we can readily infer its possibility. Professor Klosko explores these two claims at step (5). Let us start with the latter. Rawls famously describes his theory as realistically utopian (Rawls 1999b, pp. 5 7). Professor Klosko says that if Rawls s theory is to be realistic, it must not require wholesale changes in social conditions or human nature. I do not think that this is entirely right. For in describing his work as realistically utopian, Rawls said he followed Rousseau, according to whom political philosophy should take men as they are and laws as they might be (Rawls 1999b, p. 13). I agree with Professor Klosko that if Rawls was committed to taking men as they are, then he cannot premise his account of moral development and inherent stability on psychological assumptions which entail wholesale changes in human nature. But if justice as fairness provides the right account of how laws might be, then enacting those laws would bring about social conditions in which the political liberties have fair value, opportunity satisfies fair equality and capital is widely distributed in a property-owning democracy. I submit that these changes in social conditions would be wholesale in any putative liberal democracy with which we are familiar See Rawls (2000, pp ) where Rawls says that Kant thought history aroused loathing for our species. 9 See, for example, Niebuhr (1986, pp. 141). Though Niebuhr did not, of course, know Rawls s work, he is quite critical of the overly optimistic view of humanity that he thinks Enlightenment liberalism assumes. 10 According to data compiled by the UN, Sweden has the lowest Gini coefficient of income, and hence the least income inequality, among the advanced democracies (

10 260 P. Weithman If that is right, then Rawls s well-ordered society is at best distantly approximated by the societies of our world. Since Rawls s argument for the inherent stability of the well-ordered society appeals to the way the social conditions of that society would influence the moral development of its citizens, and since citizens of the well-ordered society would develop under social conditions that differ wholesale from those that prevail anywhere in our world, the possibility of Rawls s well-ordered society has to be established by argument. It cannot be established by observation, as Professor Klosko suggests it might be. Rawls s arguments are psychological and philosophical. The psychological laws on which Rawls relies the three laws of reciprocity (Rawls 1999c, pp ) and the tendency expressed in the Aristotelian principle (Rawls 1999c, pp ) purport to describe men as they are. But Professor Klosko is right that Rawls did not provide them with much of any empirical support. Even if he had, his arguments would still have had to be highly conjectural, since they concern the ways in which those laws operate under idealized social conditions. Whether Rawls s argument for the possibility of a well-ordered society is undermined by its inevitably conjectural character depends upon what kind of modality is implicated in its conclusion. Rawls cannot have meant logical or physical possibility, understood as compatibility with the laws of logic or physics. Establishing that the well-ordered society is possible in one of those senses would not, I think, have sufficed to show that Rawls s utopian is realistic in the way that he needs it to be if it is to play the roles to which I referred in (1) (3) above. He must instead mean psychological or moral possibility. Verifying claims about these kinds of possibility is extremely difficult, complicated by the fact that, as Professor Klosko rightly implies, the laws of moral psychology are themselves subject to reasonable disagreement because they are answerable to our moral intuitions. Rawls suggested that evolutionary considerations tell in favor of the laws of reciprocity (Rawls 1999c, p. 440). In the decades since he wrote Theory of Justice, a great deal of work has been done on the evolution of morality, but my ill-informed impression is that that work is at a quite preliminary stage. 11 And so I think the most we can say at this point is that the soundness of the argument by which Rawls purports to establish that a well-ordered society is possible in his desired sense must be judged by the test of reflective equilibrium. If we find Rawls s psychological premises and his conclusion that such a society is possible to be in reflective equilibrium with our considered judgments about how men as they are could be shaped by laws as they might be, then we will think that Rawls has established its possibility. It may be impossible to say with much precision what kind of modality is involved in Rawls s argument or how likely it is that the well-ordered society will come to be. Perhaps it will be thought that until these questions are answered, the Footnote 10 continued coefficient/36ku-rvrj). This fact, when conjoined with Sweden s high level of human development, might suggest that it satisfies or comes close to satisfying the difference principle. But even if it does, Sweden would seem to need wholesale change to satisfy the demands of fair equality of opportunity as measured by social mobility; see Clark (2014, pp ). 11 For example, see Gaus (2015).

11 Reply to Professor Klosko 261 well-ordered society cannot play two of the important roles I said it plays in Rawls s thought: it cannot be the object of aspiration and reform and cannot underwrite faith in human goodness. But I remarked in the previous section that stability is also important for Rawls s project because Rawls appeals to stability in one of the arguments for his two principles. Professor Klosko contends that some of the questions he raises at step (5) pose difficulties for that argument as well. I disagree. To see why, it will help to begin with how Professor Klosko thinks Rawls s argument appeals to stability. On p. 239, Professor Klosko writes: these accounts of stability and congruence play important roles in the justification of the two principles of justice in the original position. While other views of justice may contribute to a society s stability, Rawls believes that justice as fairness will do this more effectively (emphasis added), If we thought, as we have seen Professor Klosko does, that Rawls is interested in the ability of a regime to generate its own support, then it would be natural to think that parties in the original position evaluate various conceptions of justice by asking which one would most effectively contribute to a society s stability. And it would be natural to think that some conceptions might contribute by being inherently stable, others by being imposed and still others by splitting the difference. It would then be natural to say, as Professor Klosko does, that: In lessening the gap between the two forms of stability and maintaining that existing regimes combat destabilizing factors through combinations of inherent and imposed stability, my argument calls into question central components of Rawls s argument for justice as fairness. (Klosko 2015, p. 237, emphasis added) But as I noted when considering step (2), and contrary to what Professor Klosko implies by his use of the italicized phrases in the two quoted passages, Rawls was interested in the stability of conceptions of justice and not the stability of society, or of a regime understood as a governing apparatus. Moreover, the stability to which he appealed is inherent stability understood in the way I suggested when I considered step (3), where I said that a conception of justice is inherently stable if and only if it generates its own supporting attitudes in citizens via processes that are open to view and institutions they would give themselves. This is confirmed by a passage I quoted earlier, where Rawls says a strong point in favor of a conception of justice is that it generates its own support (Rawls 1999c, p. 154, emphasis added) To see that inherent stability plays an important role[ ] in the justification of the two principles of justice in the original position, we need to see how considerations of stability enter into the parties deliberations. The parties in the original position do not ask which of the candidate principles presented to them will best stabilize a society or will most effectively enable a regime to stabilize itself. Instead they ask which of the principles is associated with a conception most likely to be inherently stable in what I have claimed is Rawls s sense of that term. When considering Rawls s two principles, the parties use their knowledge of general facts to anticipate the arguments of Theory of Justice, Part III and see whether the

12 262 P. Weithman principles, once institutionalized, would engender their own supportive moral attitudes. They then compare those arguments with what they can conjecture about the inherent stability of utilitarianism. 12 Rawls takes it to be a strong point in favor of [his] conception of justice that he thinks it wins the comparison. Once we see that Rawls s [stability] argument for justice as fairness appeals to inherent stability, the irrelevance of the fact that existing regimes combat destabilizing factors through combinations of inherent and imposed stability to the argument in the original position is clear. 13 And once we see that that argument is comparative more precisely, that parties use pairwise comparative judgments of candidate principles to rank-order them it is also clear that questions about Rawls s psychological assumptions, and about the likelihood of inherent stability, do far less to undermine the argument than they might have seemed to. For it is then clear that Rawls s stability argument turns on the relative inherent stability of justice as fairness and utilitarianism (Rawls 1999c, p. 436), and of justice as fairness and mixed conceptions. If Rawls can show that justice as fairness is more likely to be inherently stable than its rivals, his [stability] argument for justice as fairness succeeds even if he cannot say anything very precise about absolute likelihoods. Step (6): Proposal for an Empirical Turn I have argued that the contrasts I drew between imposed and inherent stability, and between Rawls and those he referred to as the dark minds of western thought, can help us to assess Rawls s contributions (Rawls 2007, p. 302). Professor Klosko s counter-proposal, offered in the closing sentences of his critique, is that we turn away from those contrasts and carefully consider putative liberal democracies and how they actually work (Klosko 2015, p. 248). The problem with this proposal is that descriptions of how [putative liberal democracies] actually work are quite often couched in terms that beg for philosophical interrogation, and that the questions which need to be asked can be answered I would say, can best be answered by drawing on Rawls s project as I have interpreted it. It is a commonplace of political science that the stability of almost all governments depends upon some degree of moral support. More specifically, stability is said to depend on at least some citizens accepting, to at least some degree, that those who rule them have a right to rule. It is said to depend, that is, upon their accepting their rulers legitimacy. 14 One very important question raised by this commonplace concerns the conditions under which the legitimacy ascribed to government is genuine, so that government really does have a right to rule and citizens beliefs that it does are well-founded. It seems plausible that a ruler, government or constitution is legitimate only if it is just 12 For a vivid statement of how the comparison works, see (Laden 1991, pp , p. 212). 13 Of course, one might disagree with Rawls and argue that it is inherent stability which is irrelevant to the choice of principles, either because one thinks that stability of any kind is irrelevant to the demands of justice (as Cohen 2008 argues) or because one thinks (as Professor Klosko seems to) that some other kind of stability is relevant instead. But those are arguments that would need to be made. 14 See, for example, Gilley (2006, p. 499).

13 Reply to Professor Klosko 263 to some significant degree, even if it is not perfectly so. We might call this requirement the requirement of approximate justice. To make the requirement clearer, and so to understand the conditions of legitimacy, we need to understand the demands of justice. We also need to see whether those demands are ordered by priority rules since some demands might be more pressing than others, and may therefore bear more heavily on legitimacy. Rawls s theory, with its two lexically ordered principles of justice and its identification of constitutional essentials, obviously promises the kind of deep understanding of justice that is needed if we are to grasp the conditions of legitimacy. As the connection with justice suggests, legitimacy is a moral notion. Since acknowledgement or recognition of it is said to elicit the moral support and compliance that make for stability, acknowledgement or recognition of legitimacy must engage citizens capacity to be moved by moral considerations. Indeed, because of legitimacy s connection with justice, its acknowledgement or recognition would seem to engage citizens sense of justice and probably their sense of duty as well. But how exactly it does so is not at all well understood. Indeed even the example Professor Klosko cites of voluntary compliance with tax codes seems to me to require searching examination before we can claim to know how [it] actually work[s]. My own view is that one of Rawls s most profound insights is found in his groundbreaking discussions of what a desire to be just is a desire for (see, for example, Rawls 1999c, pp and p. 501), and that it may be possible to mine those discussions for insights into the ways in which acknowledgement of legitimacy is motivational. Since those discussions are in service of Rawls s larger argument that justice as fairness would be inherently stable, it would be mistake to think we can understand how putative liberal democracies actually work while turning away from that argument and from the contrasts which help us see how it goes. Still another set of questions raised by the connection between legitimacy and stability arises because citizens belief in their rulers legitimacy is not left to chance. Rather, states and rulers invest considerable resources in their attempts to instill this belief and to instill in each citizen and coalition the higher-order belief that others have a first-order belief in their rulers legitimacy. These attempts are subject to normative assessment; indeed, since they are exercises of political power, we can ask whether these attempts are themselves legitimate. I contrasted Rawls with those whom he describes as the dark minds to bring out what I take to be an important fact about his treatment of stability: the kind of stability that interested him was the inherent stability which obtains when citizens honor principles of justice while acting autonomously. I have also stressed that Rawls thought citizens require a significant amount of moral education if they are to be just persons, including education in the justice of their institutions. Thus the contrast with the dark minds, in effect, raises the question of what kinds of education about their institutions is consistent with citizens autonomy. This is a question whose force is driven home by the fact that some of the dark minds thought social stability should be secured by using, not only an absolute power to coerce, but also methods of civic education that were decidedly illiberal as Rawls himself observes. (see Rawls 1999c, p. 398 note 1) Rawls s discussions of full publicity and

14 264 P. Weithman of the desires that publicity elicits provide materials for answering that question. (Rawls 1996, pp ) These discussions, like the discussions of moral motivation referred to just above, are part of Rawls s treatment of inherent stability. If we think, as I do, that a government s attempts to persuade its citizens of its legitimacy must respect their autonomy, then we will think the right account of how putative liberal democracies should function should profit from that treatment rather turn away from it. References Clark, Gregory The son also rises. London: Princeton University Press. Cohen, Gerald A Rescuing justice and equality. London: Harvard University Press. Cohen, Joshua Democratic equality. Ethics 99: Gaus, Gerald The egalitarian species. Social Philosophy and Policy 31: Gilley, Bruce The meaning and measure of state legitimacy: Results for 72 countries. European Journal of Political Research 45: Hampton, Jean Hobbes and the social contract tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kavka, Gregory Rule by fear. Noûs 17: Kavka, Gregory Hobbesian moral and political theory. London: Princeton University Press. Klosko, George Rawls, Weithman, and the Stability of Liberal Democracy. Res Publica. doi: /s x. Laden, Anthony Games, Fairness, and Rawls s a theory of justice. Philosophy & Public Affairs 20(3): Lewis, David Prisoners dilemma is a newcomb problem. Philosophy & Public Affairs 8: Niebuhr, Reinhold Augustine s political realism. In The essential reinhold niebuhr, ed. Robert McAfee Brown. London: Yale University Press. Rawls, John A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John Political liberalism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Rawls, John. 1999a. In Collected papers, ed. Samuel Freeman, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 1999b. The law of peoples. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John. 1999c. A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John In Lectures on the history of moral philosophy, ed. Barbara Herman, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John Justice as fairness: A restatement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rawls, John In Lectures on the history of political philosophy, ed. Samuel Freeman, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weithman, Paul Why political liberalism?. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weithman, Paul Relational stability, inherent stability, and the reach of contractualism. Social Philosophy and Policy 31:

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