Is Rawls a populist?

(Working paper) Adele Lebano, University of Milan

At the end of A Theory of Justice John Rawls is left with the same problem Rousseau faced: how to make normative principles of justice workable in the political realm. Once the veil of ignorance is raised and people are outside idealized conditions of choice, how should they deal with the particular wills that gain voice? How should they attain a stable resolution between individual values and public decisions? Rawls attempts to answer these questions in his next book, Political Liberalism. In this paper I will argue that the answers he provides are inadequate and result in a kind of populism. Rawlss political liberalism is populist and even risks despotism because he weakens philosophical aspirations for the sake of political agreement.

1. Rousseau, Rawls and Rikers account of populism

In his book Liberalism against Populism William Riker describes populism as dangerous for individual liberty because it descends directly from Rousseaus

Rousseau and populism are often used interchangeably in this argument, although unfortunate this does not underlay a simplified, negative connotation of either. My account, as I hope to show effectively, departs substantially from Berlins reading of Rousseau and from Rikers appreciation of this reading. Yet in discussing their views of Rousseau and populism as bad for freedom, I acknowledge the important insights the classical liberal reading provides, and some motivated concerns it highlights.

political philosophy. But the narrow dichotomy Riker establishes between liberalism and populism is insufficient for finding a balance between what is realistic and what is attractive in a pluralistic society.1 Riker examines democracy from the standpoint of social choice theory, which he views as the analytical means for explaining the tensions that cross the practice of democracy and challenge its theory (Riker 1982). The uniqueness of democracy lies in continuity between means and ends; any account of the ideal that does not consider feasibility is at best meaningless and at worst dangerous because sacrifices real men and women for what Isaiah Berlin called an abstract man of tomorrow. Riker shares Berlins rejection of political ideals that force those who are not sufficiently rational to comply, arguing that any reform of democracy that relies on criteria of justification other than voting is a risk for liberty. Acknowledging this risk, Riker offers a normative critique of populism. Riker builds the distinction between liberalism and populism on populisms assumption that majorities are always right because is they are the voice of the people. Liberals, in Rikers view, think the value and justification of democracy lies in periodic elections and in those temporary majorities that provide a chance of getting rid of bad rulers. This chance is all we can ask a political system, and elections and alternating majorities are the best protections for liberty. The problem with populism is its claim for the normative meaning of collective decisions. Contrasting the populist and liberal interpretations of voting, Riker argues that populism is based on coercion: in populism government elected by the people are liberty in its supreme form and therefore always right. Many have argued that this version of populism is simplistic. Riker highlights
1

Realistic and attractive renders, in Joshua Cohens words, the distinction between feasibility and desirability against which different accounts of political theory and their methods develop.

some crucial flaws of populism but he fails to see that besides this bad populism there is also a good one. Good populism as the appeal to cognitive elements of collective decisions is contained in Rousseau himself.2 Riker is often blamed for emphasizing the limits of populism without distinguishing between its moderate and extreme versions. Even Rousseaus account of the progression from individual preferences to social choice, and his proposal of the general will as a solution to their mismatch, is less unequivocal than has generally been appreciated. 3 The extreme version of populism, which views majority as inherently moral, derives from the traditional reading of Rousseau. Moderate versions of populism, on the other hand, are more consistent with liberalism. Against extreme populism it can be argued that merely because a majority rejects a given view does not mean that view is publicly unjustifiable. A refused assent does not prove wrongness any more than consent proves rightness. The majority may refuse or consent for the wrong reasons, for example out of obstinacy, selfishness, or plain confusion (Gaus 1999). Rawls offers a moderate populist view of the relation between individual and collective choices. It is only moderate populist because Rawls imagines idealized conditions in which it is possible to distinguish between qualified and actual consent. In political liberalism qualified consent is the consent of reasonable people; this consent is in itself sufficient for public justification. A political demand or proposal is justified when supported by reasons sufficient to convince reasonable people (PL: 119). Reasons are good when they are
2

Rousseau is in this sense double, being at the same time the father of organicistic totalitarianism, and of a more cognitivistic account of individual references. The two sides of Rousseau are quite divergent. In the first case, individuals dissolve in the social, undifferentiated body, while in the second case individuals vote expresses their seek for the truth, namely for a collective decision that better satisfied some independent standards of public justification. This two-fold reading of Rousseau is the starting point for the account of Rawls as a populist of the wrong kind I am proposing here. 3 So-called epistemic populism is paradigmatic of this different reading of Rousseau as a good reference point for those who support more substantive accounts of democracy. For an interpretation of Rousseau as not automatically prone to despotism see in particular Cohen (1986 a), Burgio (1989), Gaus (1997), Affeldt (1999).

sharable by the reasonable. They do not need to be the best reasons, or true reasons, merely reasons based on commonsense truths or scientific conclusions (PL: 225). These plain truths are uncontroversial, Rawls says, because they partake of every reasonable system of belief without appealing to the whole truths of those systems. Gerald Gaus calls this conception of public justification populist because it assumes acceptability to people who embrace public reason as sufficient to justify political arguments (Gaus 1999). Rawls populism lies in this idea of public reason as the one habitus appropriate for the public sphere. Because it dissolves metaphysical disagreement into political consensus, Rawls thinks that public reason leads to social unity without oppression. Is this the case? Rawlss justification appears circular rather than justificatory. Public reason includes the appropriate use of judgment, inference, evidence, and respect for the rules of public discourses. Together these elements compose what Rawls calls the liberal ideal. All inferences are objective when reasonable, and they are reasonable because they are made by reasonable people. Yet the world proves that reasonable people can fail to draw correct inferences. In other words, reasonable disagreement can occur in the public realm as well as in the realm of comprehensive doctrines (Gaus 1999). The blurry boundary between non-public and public casts Rawlss entire solution into doubt. In fact, the public cannot be insulated from conflicts if politics is to be preserved. Even reasonable people do not always get along. So Rawls is left with a problem. It seems possible to avoid giving solid reasons for our political

beliefs, by invoking public reason.4 But what actually entitles us to invoke public reason is the assumption that public reason is right because it leads to political stability. The result is ideals, beliefs and proposals that are assumed rather than justified. The problem is thus the absolutism of reasonableness. A possible solution is to recover the philosophical way of addressing truth as something that solves our certainty-dependence by making us doubt the soundness of our proposals, in both the public and the non - public realm.

2. Philosophical abstinence and reasonableness: Rawlss populism

Rawls opens Political Liberalism by asking how it is possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens, who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines (PL: 4). His answer is that to be feasible normative political theory must bracket all metaphysical concerns. The problem of political liberalism in Rawlss account is how to reach consensus on principles for organizing the public sphere. Rawls solves this problem by introducing the idea of reasonableness. Reasonable people are people who acknowledge a common sense of justice despite their diverse credos; this is the basis of the normative consensus without which political consensus can be reached only via illiberal action or instrumental coincidence. This conception of reasonableness aims to justify political liberalism without any appeal to metaphysics. It says that citizens are free to choose their own metaphysical credos but must not ask the state to enforce them. In this view, philosophical arguments are divisive because they deal with ultimate truths, or what
4

On this aspect of Rawlss tautological justification and the secular fundamentalist it may entail, see also Campos (1994).

Richard Rorty called alternative geometries that are impossible to reconcile (Rorty 1991). By expelling all reference to truth, Rawls adheres blindly to the status quo. The result is an elision of society as it is and society as it should be. The risk of this elision is that by eliminating the possibility of distinguishing between less and more preferable states of the world, it yields a dogmatic political theory that requires people to begin with agreement because it is incapable of persuading them with reasons. In other words, the giving of reasons is substituted with an appeal to reasonableness. This is the danger of Rawlsian political liberalism.5 The more immediate problem that Rawls faces, however, is what to do with all those unreasonable people who prefer not to bracket their ideas of the good when they enter the public realm.6 What are the appropriate means for attaining a just society given the presence of what Isaiah Berlin calls the recalcitrant? (Berlin 1969: 146). When people refuse to share what Rawls calls the common floor of liberal political culture, political philosophy should still have cards to play. The challenge lies in providing justification not only to friends but also to foes; Socrates did not after all speak only to Socratics. Liberalism must meet this challenge if it is to avoid dogmatism and ideology. While Rawls acknowledges that there are many liberalisms (PL: 223), liberals are more diverse than he admits. Dogmatic liberalism can give reasons only to those able to understand them, reasons grounded in beliefs that precede political deliberation. Such reasons are acceptable only to those whose beliefs already meet the
5

In PL reasonableness is presented as a disposition of citizens corresponding to their two moral powers: i. having a sense of justice, ii. acting according to it. It is the disposition to regard other as free and equal and therefore to vote principles, rules, institutions that are founded on equal respect, on reciprocity (Boettcher 2004: 598). 6 The less immediate problem is, as Gaus shows, how to deal with the disagreement among the reasonable people. I believe both problems can be addressed by the recovery of philosophy as a quest for independent standards.

criteria for political justification on which they must agree. When one abandons philosophy as Rawls does, one is left with only two alternatives: the populism of Rousseau or the liberalism of Madison. One is therefore confronted by the same unconvincing dichotomy that Riker posits. Rawlss political theory, like that of Rousseau and Kant, risks at best impracticality and at worst utopianism because it weights ends more than means. Riker responds to this danger by focusing on feasibility rather than desirability. According to Riker, democracy is nothing more than an effective means of removing bad rulers. It is not fairer than other systems, merely adequate to the minimal purpose of defending the individual negative liberty to vote against (Berlin 1969). Separateness among individuals is what allows them to resist collapsing into a single social organism. Riker fears what Berlin calls organic metaphors to justify the coercion of some men by other in order to raise them to higher level of freedom (Berlin 1969: 133). These metaphors are adopted when collective entities such as nations, states, races, or parties are posited as actualizing individuals true selves. By contrast, liberal political theory holds that citizens should remain distinct from such collective entities; this Lockean view is traditionally opposed to Rousseaus organicism. According to Locke, it is not solidarity with a collective body but rather the sharing of human reason that leads to political stability. Rawls adopts this Lockean premise to reach a Rousseauian conclusion: homogeneity of the reasonable as the basis for political agreement. A Theory of Justice is a critique of the utilitarian underestimation of individual people. In the utilitarian view, agents of choice are subordinated to social utility. Rawls substitutes this undifferentiated maximization of utility with the idea of fair distribution of welfare benefits and hence life chances. Rawls thus begins by taking

differences between individuals seriously. But in his next book, Political Liberalism, Rawls is more concerned with stability and social unity. Here the well-ordered society is a society of similar people, and political philosophy the language of those who already share a common interest. But this presents a problem. The problem is not the sharing of somethingwe need some common language to listen to and disagree with each otherbut rather how much should be shared. Rawls has the same problem as Rousseau: the despotic organicism that occurs when disagreement is banned from a society. Despite his effort to separate political from metaphysical doctrines, political liberalism seems incompatible with comprehensive moral views that are not themselves liberal (ONeill S. 1996: 38). Political liberalism is not neutral because it assumes that people and societies are committed to liberal values. This poses a central problem. Since liberal values are far from uncontroversial, what should be done with the people who fail to embrace them? Rawls assumes that his political conception of justice is the one on which citizens can most easily agree. Yet this agreement depends on a priori commitment to liberal values.7 Rawls expels difference by restricting justification to the supposedly homogeneous circle of the reasonable. This holistic vision is close to that of Rousseau, in whose general will neutralises disagreement rather than providing sound reasons to those who disagree. In Rawls as in Rousseau there is little dissent; to

On the idea of overlapping consensus as a consensus via convergence, see DAgostino (1996). On the one hand, all reasonable people share the same reason to accept justice as fairness because this conception of justice is grounded in a conception of persons as reasonable, rational, free and equal that is implicit in our liberal-democratic societies. In this first sense there is agreement as convergence in overlapping consensus. On the other hand, Rawls tries to secure further the agreement on justice as fairness by arguing that each reasonable citizen has in her system of values and beliefs, different but yet compatible reasons to consent to this political conception of justice. In this second sense there is agreement as consensus in overlapping consensus (DAgostino 1996: 30-31; Gaus 1999: 266-267).

paraphrase Leo Strauss, the non-cannibals are in any case eaten.8 There are no independent criteria for distinguishing between motivated and unmotivated justification. When the general will is reified in the will of a particular society, society is the measure of justice and justification becomes unsound. Rawlss version of populism leaves no room for the building of what Michael Walzer calls the walls of liberalism (Walzer 1984: 315).9

3. Rawls between Rousseau and Kant

Rawlss notion of original position in A Theory of Justice is a political translation of Kants concept of autonomy or self-mastery. Original position is the setting in which the principles of justice are chosen unanimously. The people who choose these principles are ideal or noumenal persons in the sense that they are unaware of their social advantages and particular beliefs. Original position posits citizens as free, equal, and autonomous individuals who have gained an appropriate distance from society. This veil of ignorance is the procedural device that allows individuals to choose principles for what Rousseau calls, in The Social Contract, society as it should be. Like Rousseau, Rawls is concerned with how people can maintain their autonomy as individuals while arriving at collective decisions. Under the veil of ignorance, people choose principles with reason and prudence because they know nothing of their capacities and social advantage while understanding that scarcity of
8

As Strauss (1959) underlines Rousseau is problematic not because he is the father of contemporary totalitarianism (according to Strauss Rousseau would have detested any totalitarian outcome) but because of his conception of general will: since the general will is the will of the society, cannibalism is right if the society consists of cannibals. 9 I argue there is a way to be pupulist, in the sense of interested in a more substantive version of liberalism, without becoming illiberal. This way passes through the commitment to be faithful to liberty and to truth at the same time.

resources will limit their life choices later. In order for this prudence to continue when the veil is lifted, a shift must occur from rational calculation to rational morality. Even though they now know who they are and what they own, people continue to comply with the principles of justice they have chosen because they are moral. This is the same question Rousseau addresses in discussing the moral consequences of the social contract. Like Rousseaus general will, Rawlss principles of justice are both moral standards for evaluating norms and policies, and moral inclinations of each and every person. The above are also Rawlss central concerns in Political Liberalism. Here, however, Rawls draws on Rousseau without Kants mediation. He must therefore deal with the implicit organicism of Rousseaus project. Rousseau doubts human sociability and thinks that people would have an easier life in the state of nature. But he also ranks natural freedom lower than moral freedom. Since the latter can only be realised inside society, Rousseau appears ready to use illiberal means to secure social stabilityto force the free to be free. But what is the price of this liberation? Can imposed autonomy still be considered autonomy? Rawls seems to take a more optimistic view of pluralism because pluralism enables the respect and reciprocity that are essential for social unity. This conception of justice appears to combine individual with collective rationality (Chapman 1975). Like Rousseau, Rawls thinks moral attitudes are a feature of the well-ordered society, where citizens are concerned with general justice rather than private advantage. But outside Rawlss idealized conditions, particular wills inevitably gain voice again. These are the same wills that dominated the state of nature (Affeldt 1999). How then can Rawls secure a practical balance between rationality and morality while avoiding the totalitarian game of which Berlin accused both Rousseau and Kant? In this totalitarian game

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those who believed in freedom as rational self-direction were bound, sooner or later, to consider how this was to be applied not merely to mans inner life, but to his relation with other member of his society () A rational (or free) state would be a state governed by such laws as all rational men would freely accept; that is to say, such laws as they would themselves have enacted had they been asked what, as rational beings, they demanded; hence the frontiers would be such as all rational men would consider to be right frontiers for reasonable beings. But who, in fact, was to determine what these frontiers were? (Berlin 1969: 145)

Berlin points in the right direction even if he too easily dismisses Plato and Rousseau as bad masters for political theory and practice. Rawls could similarly to Rousseau be accused of forcing the ideal of individual moral rationality into politics, with the tragic effects Berlin points out. Rawlss populism worsens with the passage from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism. Though both books are inspired by Rousseaus concern for combining individuality with social stability, the way Rawls chooses in the second seems unsuitable to the liberal nature of his theory. Rawlss objective of moral stability can be read as the practical outcome of the commitment to freedom in Rousseau. Both stability and freedom are rooted in the appropriate relationship between citizens and state. A similar holistic ontology allows Rousseau to combine individual freedom with respect for the social contract, and allows Rawls to combine moral disagreement and social unity. In Political Liberalism Rawls identifies Rousseaus conception of democratic voting as a middle ground between the divergent views voting as either an entirely private matter or an expression of what is right and true. (PL: 219) When people have

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to relate to one another and set the norms for social cooperation, the principles according to which they do so must be consistent with their higher-order moral views. Inconsistency between these two would deny each persons autonomy. Justice in the assignment of economic benefits is always evaluated on the background of the fair distribution of benefits for the society. In this sense Rawlss solution takes part both from solidarism, when he considers the cost/benefit for each part of the society, and from singularism, when he states that individual merits are not sufficient to define a just distribution (Pettit 2005). Once again Rawls occupies a halfway position as he tries to bridge the gap between competing views of persons and society and he appears dimidiated between the primacy of civil right and individual liberty and the priority of public commitments. Somehow instrumentally to political stability, Rawls conceives freedom as the chance not to be identified with a particular moral view as we enter the public sphere, because moral views and final ends are divisive. This is a conception difficult to hold because it is hard to disagree on underlying moral views while agreeing on political actions. But in fact it is also a reductive conception of freedom. Free persons vindicate both the rights to be partisans on particular views of the good and to have a critical capacity, hence to be able to step back from these views. If persons are conceived as free they should not be prevented from choices for the sake of protecting their capacity to choose. This seems to be the more Rousseauian aspect of Rawls, where Rousseauism stands for Jacobin view of the general will. Yet it has been underlined that Rousseaus appeal to force the free to be free does not necessarily imply the coercion it is usually suspected of. And the key for a non-coercive interpretation of Rousseau can

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be found in his insistence on the will as the act of willing that can never be alienated or reduced. If we want individuals to exist as a society, they have to continuously rediscover and will together the general will (Affeldt 1999).10 The time of the will is always the present, because when we stop caring for the social contract, we no longer exist as a genuine society and become an aggregation of singularities. In this sense there is no difference between good and bad citizens, but rather between citizens and non-citizens. As we distinguish will from interest, we can preserve the idea of private interests in the making of the general will. To be citizens we do not only need to conform but to will to conform, as those who conform without willing lead to the dissolution of society. By means of the distinction between interests and wills, private interests are maintained inside the picture of social unity because what I care about (my interest) is the best path to agency, judgment and comprehension of the others. Our humanity dissolves when we give up performing our capacity of agency and judgment. In this line of interpretation, the problem of Rousseau is how to force the free to be correctly free without using coercion that would dissolve their freedom and agency. By contrast, Rawls appears too worried to secure peoples independence from contingency to allow each individual an insight on this contingency. Yet it is exactly through the exercise of judgment and choice that individuals can gain the necessary distance from contingency, when appropriate.11 In this sense the search for feasibility leads Rawls to dismiss philosophical ambitions for free justifiable choices.

10

This interpretation of Rousseau underlines the difference between will and interest that are treated as equivalent in the natural-seeming interpretation (Affeldt 1999: 308). For a similar view of Rousseau as non necessarily dangerous for individual freedom see also Burgio (1989). 11 This aspect has been underlined also by Sandel (1984, 2005).

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Among the possible path of reading of Rousseau, Rawls seems to choose a risky one. By freeing his theory from metaphysics, he weaken its foundation to the point he has to assume unquestionably a political conception of justice he can no longer justify, given the self-restrains he chose. Political Liberalism reveals Rawls as too prone to exchanging the desirability of the ideal of justice for the practicability of justice in the society. And in doing this he draws on those aspects of Rousseau that are more problematic.

4. Why public reason is unsuitable to justify a liberal political conception of justice

In Political Liberalism Rawls seems to have a democratic more than a liberal purpose, as democratic was the purpose of Rousseau. Referring to the distinction between positive and negative liberty, Rawlsian liberalism seems to move towards positive liberty, and his account of political justice gains evident Rousseauian nuances. Berlin underlines the jump from liberty as autonomy to despotism as the drawback of rationalist idealism. Even the most individualistic among the supporters of freedom as selfmastery, such as Rousseau and Kant, face problems when they want to shift the idea of freedom as rational self-direction from individuals to society. How to avoid the collisions among the wills of the others? Collision in this framework is only an intermediate step, because two truths my rational solution to political liberty and your rational solutioncannot be logically incompatible. Each and every rational person can discover the truths and

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demonstrate these truths so clearly that others could not but accept it. So those who initially disagree are brought to admit their mistake. A rational state should be governed by laws that all rational free man would accept: That is to say, such laws as they would themselves have enacted, had they been asked what, as rational beings, they demanded (Berlin 1969:145). Berlins words may refer to Rawls, besides Rousseau and Kant. It is not sufficient to substitute the plain truths of sciences and commonsense intuitions for the whole truth of metaphysics. And by substituting rational with reasonable Rawls does not seem to avoid the charge of rationalist idealism (Berlin 1969: 145). In an ideal picture of all the reasonable agreeing on the same beliefs there would be no big problem, but the question is to deal with the disagreement, as Rawls should know better. Can I force anybody to conform without becoming the only selfmaster in a world of slaves? The transformation from irrational to rational when not undertaken by individuals but by the social body becomes the opposite of Kants idea that each has to know why she ought to conform. It becomes paradoxically that nobody can choose for herself and that everybody can choose on her behalf. But this is the same old problem philosophy has to deal with. The rational legislator or the philosopher-king know before everybody else how to be rational and can but reassuring those who now have to conform without knowing, they will soon realise conformity was necessary to become fully rational. Nevertheless, if this is the impasse, becoming relativist to avoid fanatism does not seem an apt solution. This is the solution of Rorty who suggests that people are free to be partisan on their ideas because they are theirs, not because they are true. In

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doing so Rorty rescues politics by excluding philosophy. A rescue led in a rather unsatisfying way (Rorty 1991). Fanaticism comes not so much from truth, but rather from not sufficiently justified beliefs. When Rawls does not advance demands for reason of truth, but for reason of reasonableness he is still at risk of fanatism (Goerner 1996). Fanaticism seems to rest exactly in this lack of respect for those who disagree, and it is the escape from disagreement and instability that motivates it.12 Some aspects of Rawlss populism have been identified by SheldonWolins critical reading of Political Liberalism.13 In Rawlss political liberalism the underlying tradition is the contractarian one that sets strict precondition for the political game to take place (constitutional restrains, periodical elections, a bill of rights) in advance to the actual political processes involving the people. The construction of idealised conditions is the mechanism that guarantees consensusbecause as pure rational beings individuals are unanimous. It is throughout this consensus that agreement is reached (Wolin 1996: 99). Wolin reads the use of the original position as a sanctification of the status quo, for in Rawls those who are reasonable and can separate from their metaphysical beliefs are citizens of liberal democracies. This critique not only highlights the relation between Rawls and Rousseau but it charges Rawls with the same blame Wolin addresses to Plato: to be a political philosopher who suppresses his object (politics) by trying to free it from

12

Jane Hampton (1989) distinguishes between respecting ideas and respecting people who hold them. The latter is the necessary condition for liberal toleration, while it is often the former to be addressed by liberals. I do not show disrespect for a person when I contrast her ideas by means of good reasons, but only when I silence her ex-ante. And this seems to be what happens with the so called unreasonable. 13 Wolin goes in a different direction from the one here proposed, because he criticised Rawlss liberal constrains as the root for his despotic disrespect for democracy and politics, while I argue Rawlss liberalism to be to weak for his dismiss of metaphysics.

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disagreement. Rawls wants to transform those who disagree. What is important is that the transformation takes place not by means of good reasons but through the device of reasonable pluralism. This device is a restrictive but not a justified one, because Rawls builds its justification out of the pragmatic need to transform the different voices in allays for stability and social unity. In trying to ensure consensus, Rawls appears to impose the habitus of reasonableness and civility to the individuals who want to take part in the legitimating pool. The problem is the indifferentiation of the public reason, as of the general will. Both Rawls and Rousseau interpret disagreement in the public realm as a mistake induced by non-public interests and beliefs. Can this be really the case? Does Rawls find himself with an intractable public disagreement just as he tries to avoid the destabilising power of metaphysics? Rawlss path to giving content to a political conception of justice legitimates the chance of being obliged to be free and, in doing this, it confirms the suspicion that populism hampering Rawlss political liberalism. In Rawlss account political legitimacy relies on the democratic principle of obeying the law that each chooses for each other. Similarly to Rousseau, not to conform to the self-prescribed law is to fail to accomplish ones autonomy and renounce freedom.

5. Concluding remarks

The more Rawls tries to restrain the issues on which it is important to agree, the less clear he is on what is necessary to attain a justified political order. This is perhaps one reason why he tries to secure agreement by excluding from public justification those unreasonable people who cannot bracket their metaphysical beliefs.

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On closer examination, Rawlss decision to suspend metaphysics results from his belief in public reason; his complete exclusion of the unreasonable reveals this belief as non-negotiable. The problem of Rawlss liberalism, then, is not its objectivism but his failure to justify that objectivism to the unreasonable. This form of liberal populism tolerates different metaphysics only as long as they remain inside the framework of liberal political values. Rawls is intolerant of disagreement, which he regards as a menace to stability and social unity. He therefore appears to have a philosophical inclination toward what Isaiah Berlin called the bad utopianism of final solutions. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to provide a solid foundation for liberalism. In Political Liberalism, he undermines this foundation by trying to defend himself against the accusation of philosophy. Yet in trying to avoid utopianism, Rawls seems to end in ideologism. He believed that the time was ripe for a liberalism that did not need to justify itself because it would arise in a world where everyone was a liberal. But the problem is listen toand hopefully convincethose who are not. This remains the crucial task of liberal political philosophy.

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