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Reviewed by:
  • Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
  • Matthew Simpson
John Rawls. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Edited by Samuel Freeman. Cambridge, MA-London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. Pp. xix + 476. Cloth, $35.00.

From the mid-1960s to the mid-1990s the most influential American philosopher of the twentieth century treated the students of Harvard University to a course on the history of modern political philosophy stretching roughly from Hobbes to Marx. John Rawls’ lectures and lecture notes have now been carefully edited by Samuel Freeman into a magnificently odd book. [End Page 332]

As in the earlier collection of his class material, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Harvard, 2000), Rawls’ approach to the history of political thought is neither condescending nor particularly showy. One might think of his historical work as the negative image of Bertrand Russell’s. Rawls is modest, diligent, and constructive. “We must have confidence in the author, especially a gifted one” Rawls insists. “If we see that something is wrong when we take the text in a certain way, then we assume the author would have seen it too. So our interpretation is likely to be wrong” (268).

Indeed, the book’s strongest feature is not so much its conclusions as its method. Rawls writes that “in studying the works of the leading writers in the philosophical tradition, one guiding precept is to identify correctly the problems they were facing, and to understand how they viewed them and what questions they were asking” (251). He achieves a balance of philosophical interest and historical sophistication, mixed with a kind of earnestness and good humor that is very enjoyable to read.

Yet for all these merits, the book is quite strange. While Rawls preaches a contextual approach to the history of philosophy, he often practices something different. One of his interpretive techniques is to explain a given work in the history of political philosophy by comparing and contrasting it with his own theory of “justice as fairness.” In the end, the results are more fascinating than one might guess, but readers unfamiliar with Rawls’ work will be frequently baffled.

The chapters on Mill are the most egregious in this respect. Rather than raising any of the classic interpretive or critical questions about Mill’s political thought, Rawls instead asks: “How does it happen that an apparently utilitarian view leads to the same substantive content (the same principles of justice) as justice as fairness?” (267). In other words, since my own philosophy began from a critique of utilitarianism, how is it that Mill and I agree about so much? Freeman explains that Rawls usually taught his own theory of justice in this course, so probably his students could follow the argument. The novice reader will be mystified because nowhere in the book does Rawls systematically presents his own political theory.

In spite of this expository tick, Rawls develops a reading of the history of political thought that should interest anyone, even those who are hostile or indifferent to “justice as fairness.” To continue with the example above: after framing his discussion of Mill in terms of his own theory of justice, Rawls goes on to offer an interpretation of Mill’s political thought that is plausible, deep, and fascinating. In particular, he reconciles justice and utilitarianism in Mill’s thought by reference to Mill’s theory of what has happened to human self-understanding in the industrial age. Rawls argues that given the conception of equality that Mill believed to be embedded in the attitudes of the industrial world, calculations of utility will yield something close to inviolable principles of justice under any normal or anticipated conditions—principles not far distant from Rawls’ own.

The most disappointing chapters, I think, are those on Rousseau. Rawls has very interesting things to say about the meaning of amour-propre in Rousseau’s thought and about the relationship between the Second Discourse and the Social Contract. Yet his discussion of the most radical parts of Rousseau’s thought, particularly the Lawgiver and the General Will, seems willfully bland. Rawls describes the Lawgiver merely as a figure who sets up institutions that...

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