Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls

Chapter 1: Radical Liberals, Reasonable Feminists: Reason, Power, and Objectivity in MacKinnon and Rawls

As the introduction to this volume shows, John Rawls’s turn, if that is what it was, to political liberalism from the comprehensive liberalism of TJ was not generally greeted as a welcome turn of events by many feminists. This essay has had a very long history, and there are thus many people to thank. I am grateful to John Rawls, Christine Korsgaard, Amartya Sen, Fred Neuhouser, David Peritz, Talbot Brewer, James Tully, Sue Dwyer, Tamar Szabo Gendler, Martha Nussbaum, Dan Brudney, Catharine MacKinnon, Sandra Bartky, Peter Hylton, David Hilbert, David Owen, and the referees for the Journal of Political Philosophy for their comments on earlier drafts, and to audiences at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Law and Philosophy Workshop at the University of Chicago, and the philosophy departments at Harvard, DePaul, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a panel on Rawls and feminism at the Central Division meeting of the APA in 2005, where I presented versions of this material. I was able to complete significant amounts of work on this essay while being supported by the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 1 Radical Liberals, Reasonable Feminists Reason, Power, and Objectivity in MacKinnon and Rawls Anthony Simon Laden 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 24 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 24 7/25/13 9:43 AM 7/25/13 9:43 AM Radical Liberals, Reasonable Feminists 25 According to the standard interpretation, Rawls, buffeted by the criticisms of communitarians and conservative religious attacks on liberalism, retreated from the bold universal egalitarian theory of his early work to a more limited, cautious, and conciliatory approach in the later work. Among the losers, claim many feminists, were women (Okin 1994; Nussbaum 2003). What is odd about this interpretation of events is that Rawls’s development of political liberalism coincided not only with the increased presence of feminism, both in the academy more generally and in philosophy in particular, but also with an increasing concern on Rawls’s part with feminism and feminist critics of his own work. Moreover, whereas his treatment of the major communitarian criticisms of his work is dismissive at best, his reaction to feminist critics shows that he took them much more seriously. If you compare his footnote references to the work of Sandel (PL, 27, 388n21) with those to the work of Okin, Nussbaum, and other feminists (IPRR 156–57n58), it certainly looks as though he was much more concerned with developing a feminist-friendly liberalism than a communitarian -friendly one. In this chapter, I argue that Rawls succeeded, at least in one, perhaps surprising, respect. I argue that political liberalism is not blind to the oppression of women in the way that Catharine MacKinnon claims that other forms of liberalism are. MacKinnon criticizes liberalism for, among other things, its reliance on a norm of objectivity. I start by unpacking this claim with the aim of showing its merit, both as a philosophical criticism of some forms of liberal political philosophy and as a criticism with political ramifications. Political liberalism, however, does not rely on the norm of objectivity that MacKinnon’s criticism targets, and thus it need not be blind to the oppression of women. Moreover, as I argue, its account of political justification provides a norm of objectivity that feminists could comfortably adopt. To say that political liberalism is not blind to the oppression of women is not to say that it has no flaws to which feminists might object. Other chapters in this volume raise concerns about some of these flaws. It is rather to say that it is an approach with which feminists can enter into productive conversation, rather than a theory that they are doomed always to be talking past. To see the scope of my claim, it helps to distinguish two forms of faulty vision. A theory is shortsighted if it fails to attend to a form of oppression. Shortsighted theories can be corrected by pointing out the form of oppression missed. A theory is blind, however, if it is not theoretically equipped to respond to such a point, if there is nothing within its theoretical machinery that allows it to see the oppression it is shown as 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 25 18442-Abbey_FemInterp_Rawls.indd 25 7/25/13 9:43 AM 7/25/13 9:43 AM 26 Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls oppression. Thus...