GLOSSARY OF TERMS FOR JOHN RAWLS

antiperfectionism (adjective: antiperfectionist): A political philosophy that claims that civil laws ought not to promote a particular notion of the good life, beyond enforcing basic prohibitions of the most grave crimes, such as theft, murder, perjury, etc. Antiperfectionism sees the duty of law as merely to protect citizens from harming one another and to permit them to pursue whichever notion of the good life they desire. See also PERFECTIONISM.

Aquinas: Full name: Thomas Aquinas. The thirteenth-century Italian from a family of the nobility who joined the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans) in his youth and became one of the foremost philosophers and theologians of his century and of western history. His most famous work is the Summa Theologiae in which is found, among many other things, a presentation of his theory of natural law, which has become the standard by which most other theories of natural law are judged. Rawls considered Aquinas’s view of natural law to be an example of a dominant-end theory because it refers all of human existence to God. See also DOMINANT-END THEORY and the subtopic of this website on THOMAS AQUINAS.

comprehensive views (also comprehensive doctrines): The term that John Rawls uses to refer to philosophical understandings of what is good for human beings that go beyond what everyone does or can agree upon. Rawls calls these views “controversial” because people disagree about them. Rawls considered religious beliefs and natural law theory to be comprehensive views. See also PURELY POLITICAL CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE.

dominant-end theories: For Rawls, any kind of political perfectionism that sets a single good as the goal for everyone, such as money, power, or God. He would classify natural law theory, especially that proposed by Thomas Aquinas, as a dominant-end theory. He thought that all such theories were harmful because, he said, they all impose a degree of uniformity on all individuals that denies the legitimate variety of ways people can choose to lead good lives. Defenders of such theories, particularly those theories that place God as their end, would argue that Rawls does not appreciate how such theories provide room for great variety in the kinds of lives people can lead while still all being subordinated to a single end.

egalitarian: (From the French word égalité, meaning “equality”.) Promoting equality; describes especially those political theories that try to make all citizens in society equal, not only before the law, but also in other respects as well, especially in resources of various kinds. 

heterogeneous: Varied; having variety; including individuals of many different kinds. Opposite to homogeneous. See also HOMOGENEITY.

homogeneity: Uniformity; the state of being homogeneous, that is, uniform or all of one kind. Usually used in reference to a group of individuals. Opposite to heterogeneous. See also HETEROGENEOUS.

Ignatius of Loyola, St.: A sixteenth-century Spanish nobleman, who, after he was wounded in war, underwent a deep religious conversion during his convalescence and founded the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), a religious order of priests and non-ordained men within the Catholic Church. It was devoted to missionary work (especially, at first, the reconversion of Protestants to Catholicism), education, and direct service to the pope. Loyola famously wrote The Spiritual Exercises, a series of highly intense spiritual meditations for a thirty-day retreat, which all those who aspired to join his order had to undergo. The Spiritual Exercises are highly demanding and aim to bring the retreatant to repent of his past sins and to devote himself to God alone. It encapsulates much of the spirit of the Catholic response to the Reformation and had a lasting influence on Catholicism as a whole. Rawls points precisely to the spirit reflected in The Spiritual Exercises as an example of a “dominant-end theory” because it orients all aspects of human existence toward God. See also DOMINANT-END THEORY.

intuitionism: any philosophy that derives or claims to derive its principles in whole or in part from “intuition.” Intuition is usually defined as the first judgment that reason makes, almost automatically, upon observing any reality, before reason goes on to dissect and weigh the truth of that judgment again other considerations. Rawls describes certain forms of natural law theory as varieties of intuitionism.

irrational: In Rawls’s particular view, to be “irrational” is not to have a coherent and plausible plan to achieve an end one may have in mind. This differs from the more general definition of “irrational,” that is, not to be in agreement with correct reasoning.

justice as fairness: The doctrine of liberalism that John Rawls formulated in A Theory of Justice (1971), his first major work. It holds that 1) each person has an equal right to a fully adequate set of equal liberties that is compatible with a similar set of liberties for everyone; and 2) that social or economic inequalities may exist only if everyone has an equal opportunity to obtain them and if these inequalities end up benefitting the weakest members of society compared to what the weakest members would receive in any other possible social arrangement. When he first published A Theory of Justice, Rawls believed that justice as fairness did not entail a comprehensive view of what is good for human beings. However, in his later career he acknowledged that justice as fairness was useful only in specific parts of social life because it contained some principles that not everyone in a truly pluralistic society could accept. See also PURELY POLITICAL CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE and COMPREHENSIVE VIEWS.

Kant: Full name: Immanuel Kant. A late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German philosopher, considered by some to be the last of the philosophers of the Enlightenment. In order to solve certain philosophical problems that the Enlightenment raised (especially those raised by the Scottish philosopher David Hume) he tried to reground human knowledge and moral norms in logical necessity, without any reference to observation of the objective world (for example, without reflecting on nature). In doing so he hoped to preserve absolute moral norms and man’s ability to know absolute truths generally. In moral philosophy he famously formulated the “categorical imperative” as a necessary moral norm that all had to follow. This imperative states that one ought to follow those moral principles—and only those moral principles—that could be made a universal law that could bind everyone. Kant also thought that human dignity was grounded in man’s capacity to reason. John Rawls is considered to be a follower of Kant because he tried to formulate absolute norms for society based on logical necessity, without regard to a theory of nature.

Liberalism: A political philosophy that claims that all citizens in a society have an inalienable right to participate directly in their own political governance, in opposition to the claim that a monarch or an aristocracy can rightfully govern a country without the participation of the whole citizenry. In American politics in the twentieth century, the term came to include more specifically claims that the government (and in the thinking of some, primarily the government) ought to take responsibility for caring for the weakest members of society; that individuals have a right to engage in any behavior that does not clearly violate the liberty or well-being of others; and that government generally ought to intervene energetically in the economy, even beyond enforcing basic norms of justice. Many consider John Rawls to be the primary philosopher of contemporary American liberalism in the later, twentieth-century meaning of the word, though he considered himself to be more precisely a member of the older, broader liberal tradition.

maximin rule, the: A central principle of the thought of John Rawls. It claims that a citizen, if given the choice, and if he has no prior knowledge of his social standing or “comprehensive view” of what the good life is, will naturally choose to live in a society in which the worst possible result for himself will be the best of all possible worst results for himself in all possible societies. Rawls presumed the truth of this rule in order to argue that his conception of “justice as fairness” is superior to all other political conceptions of justice. See also COMPREHENSIVE VIEWS.

modus vivendi: (Latin for “a way of living.”) A manner of living and surviving or “getting by” in spite of difficulties. In political philosophy (for example, the thought of Rawls), a way of making society stay together despite deep divisions of opinion between citizens that would naturally tend toward open conflict if left unchecked, a sort of “truce” achieved by practical compromise rather than principled agreement.

original position: Part of John Rawls’s thought experiment by which he derives his concepts of “justice as fairness” and “public reason.” In the experiment the original position refers to the situation of people before they enter into society, stripped of any social advantage or comprehensive views. See also COMPREHENSIVE VIEWS, JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS, PUBLIC REASON.

parochial: restricted to a small area or scope; narrow; limited.

perfectionism (adjective: perfectionist): In political philosophy, any philosophy that proposes a certain notion of the good life as the goal of society that should be promoted in its laws. Perfectionism would claim that laws ought to do more than merely prohibit heinous crimes (such as murder, theft, and perjury): they ought also to promote certain virtues and moral behavior to lead people to become good. Moreover, perfectionists would say that certain immoral acts that two or more individuals engage in can be outlawed even if done privately and even if the individuals all agree to engage in that behavior. Natural law theory is a kind of perfectionism. See also ANTIPERFECTIONISM.

pluralism: A commitment to defend in society the existence of many different kinds of religious belief, philosophy, or other fundamental commitments to transcendent truth, which Rawls calls “comprehensive views.” See also COMPREHENSIVE VIEWS.

public reason: According to John Rawls, those arguments and claims that a reasonable citizen can be presumed to hold or that should be acceptable to him in light of the requirements for a peaceful society. For Rawls, citizens may justify their opinions about the content of laws only on the basis of arguments that qualify as public reason.

purely political conception of justice: the most basic claims about citizens’ rights and liberties that everyone accepts because they are so basic. “Purely political” can also mean “pragmatic.” In Rawls’s language it is a kind of “moral conception of justice” that applies to political, social, and economic institutions only; it addresses the most basic questions necessary for uniting society and does not make what he calls controversial, “comprehensive” claims about what is good for human beings. Rawls thought that social order could be based only on purely political conceptions of justice. See also JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS.

rational: for Rawls, the quality of pursuing one’s personal ends by a coherent and plausible plan. This differs slightly from the more general definition of “rational,” that is, the quality of being in accord with correct reasoning. See also IRRATIONAL, REASON.

reason: Man’s natural capacity to know truth, especially without supernatural help from God. Often distinguished from revelation. See also REVELATION.

Reformation: The Christian religious movement begun in the early sixteenth century by Martin Luther in Germany, which spread throughout northern Europe and led many people and even whole countries to leave the Catholic Church. This division of European Christianity into two strongly opposed parts became the excuse for over a century of warfare across the continent  among the various countries of Europe, as each dedicated itself to defending and enforcing either the Protestant or the Catholic religion (though very often with very secular motives as well). This fighting is sometimes referred to as “the wars of religion.” The acrimony, scale, and length of the fighting was unprecedented in European history since ancient times and left many lasting, painful, and fearful memories in the minds of Europeans. Historians differ as to the main causes of the wars of religion (whether they were caused by religion itself or rather by politics), but John Rawls believed that they arose precisely because societies ordered themselves around “comprehensive views” of the good (in this case religious beliefs) rather than around public reason. See also COMPREHENSIVE VIEWS, PUBLIC REASON.

revelation: truths revealed supernaturally to man by God, that is, by means beyond the natural knowledge that man has through reason alone. See also REASON.

rule of law: to order a society by law, that is, by publicly communicated, reasonable ordinances directed at the common good and crafted by those rightfully charged to care for the common good of society. Usually opposed to arbitrary rule or despotism (whether benevolent or tyrannical), in which one or a few individuals who happen to have power arbitrarily direct society, often toward their own interests, regardless of what reason and the common good require. The rule of law generally protects individuals’ rights and the common good by limiting the power of government and subjecting governments’ officials to a higher standard applicable to all citizens, including themselves. An important tenet of the rule of law is that the officers of the law ought never to go beyond what the law permits—even if they act for what they think to be a noble purpose—except temporarily in true emergencies. There are at least two reasons for this restriction: 1) because an officer who habitually abrogates the law acts as though he himself and not transcendent justice were the source of citizens’ rights (that is, he puts himself above the law); and 2) because individual officials in the midst of the tasks of administering the government are often poorly positioned to reason through what the common good requires in the moment, whereas the slower, deliberative processes by which law is produced are more likely to discern correctly the requirements of the common good.

social calculus: To determine what is best for society by calculating or weighing the respective benefits of one option over another. In Prof. Wolfe’s essay it refers specifically to what utilitarians would do to determine what action society should take: to choose the action with the best overall balance of outcomes, without considering whether that action is wrong by its nature. See also UTILITARIANISM.

social contract theory: A political philosophy that conceives of society as the result of a contract into which the members of society enter by free consent. Society is therefore formed primarily by individual choice, not by natural ties of blood relations, shared culture, shared language, shared religion, obligations, or the choice of anyone other than the individual citizens. Rawls’s theory is considered a form of social contract theory.

teleological: (From telos, meaning “end” in Greek.) Related to teleology, an account of “ends” or “purposes,” especially of human beings, and especially as those ends are thought to point to how humans ought to behave. Most varieties of natural law theory, especially that set forth by Thomas Aquinas, are teleological because they derive moral principles based on the purposes or ends that one finds indicated in human nature, especially in nature as exemplified in individuals who reach perfection or happiness. Teleological is sometimes also used to describe the quite different moral philosophy of utilitarianism, which also takes an “end” as its guide (utility or good outcomes), though utilitarianism does not accept the notions of nature or perfection that are central to Aquinas’s natural law theory. See also AQUINAS, UTILITARIANISM.

tolerance: putting up with the failings of another person (or the legitimate ways in which they differ from us) for the sake of a greater good, rather than punishing them or refusing to live peacefully with them. Thinkers of both the Enlightenment (such as John Locke in his Letter on Toleration) and the Christian tradition (such as Pope Pius XII in his address Ci Riesce) have discussed the appropriateness of tolerance in civil society in various cases. Rawls thought that his theory of justice fostered tolerance and undermined intolerance.

utilitarianism: A moral philosophy that (in its most basic form) claims that when one decides how to act, the only rule one must follow is to achieve the best balance of maximizing good outcomes and minimizing bad outcomes. It claims that there are no actions that are always and everywhere forbidden; certain actions that many would consider always unjustifiable (such as killing the innocent) would to a utilitarian be permissible if it appeared that, on balance, a greater good would come from choosing such actions rather than the possible alternatives. Critics of utilitarianism, such as Rawls, fault it for justifying moral anarchy and for creating a society where the strong may take advantage of the weak.

veil of ignorance, the: Part of John Rawls’s thought experiment by which he derives his concepts of “justice as fairness” and “public reason.” In this hypothetical scenario, the veil of ignorance is that which blinds people to the social position or the comprehensive view of the good that they will hold before they choose which kind of society to form with each other. Rawls thought that people in such a position would choose a society in which the worst outcome possible for them would be the best among the worst outcomes of all possible societies. This conclusion proved for him that all societies should therefore seek to maximize the position of the weakest members while still maintaining an overall framework that provided equal liberties and opportunities for all. See also COMPREHENSIVE VIEWS, JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS, PUBLIC REASON.