Liberalism & The Good? Oakeshott & Galston as the Roads Not Taken

• In Event: Strauss, Arendt, Churchill, and Liberalism

Abstract

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls develops a philosophical foundation for liberal thought. Rawls provides for justice a central role in governing the relationship of the principles of liberty and equality within his theoretical society. In Political Liberalism, Rawls’ clarifies that his characterization of justice is not one of an encompassing rational doctrine, but is instead a theory of the right: He rejects the view of justice as carrying with it a comprehensive moral theory in favor of a political conception specific to each subject. Rawls’ theory took shape in the post-war period, and, as Katrina Forrester argues, contains the unspoken conception of the good of that period. Rawls’ theory emerged some twenty years later, when, Forrester asserts, the post-war moral foundation on which Rawls’ account rested was absent.

Emerging at a time of crisis in political thought, Rawls’ was not alone in developing novel accounts of justice. Michael Oakeshott’s On Human Conduct emerged contemporaneous to A Theory of Justice, and William Galston’s Liberal Purposes did the same for Political Liberalism. These accounts stand in opposition to Rawls’, and represent roads not taken as liberalism emerged from its crisis years. This paper seeks to interrogate the comparative anonymity of these accounts in relation to Rawls’ own, and assess whether either can address the critique Forrester raises in In the Shadow of Justice and Liberalism and Social Theory after John Rawls that Rawls account is so malleable so as to be unfit for purpose.

Author

• Andrew Kaplan, Independent Scholar