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1 Rawls’s Kantianism I. Introduction Numerous scholars have questioned the depth of Rawls’s Kantianism. For example , in their early responses to Theory, Andrew Levine and Oliver Johnson cast aspersions on Rawls’s Kantian credentials, and they were not alone.1 More recently , it has become common for people (especially political liberals) to point out that §40 of Theory is entitled “A Kantian Interpretation of Justice as Fairness ,” suggesting that justice as fairness, though not itself Kantian, can be given such an interpretation.2 In the original preface to Theory, however, Rawls himself asserts that his theory of justice is “highly Kantian in nature,” an assertion that is echoed in papers including “A Kantian Conception of Equality ” (1975) and “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory” (1980) (KCE 264–66; KCMT 303–5). Even as late as 1997, Rawls refers to Theory’s version of justice as fairness as a “comprehensive liberal doctrine,” one inspired in large part by Kant and with aspirations beyond mere justice.3 Samuel Freeman has remarked upon the extent of this inspiration: 1. Levine (1974), Johnson (1974). Others have criticized Rawls’s purported Kantianism more selectively, such as Höffe (1984), Krasnoff (1999), and Budde (2007). His Kantianism has been defended by, among others, Darwall (1976, 1980), Davidson (1985), and Guyer (2000, 262–86). 2. This point has been made to me several times in seminar settings and is perhaps turning into “folk wisdom,” i.e., claims that everyone believes to be true but nobody has bothered to (dis)prove. 3. IPRR 614. Doctrines are comprehensive, according to Rawls, when they include “conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole” (PL 13). Rawls’s lengthy lectures on Kant (nearly 200 pages in LHMP) indicate that Kant is the philosopher who most profoundly influenced him. From the idea of “the priority of the right over the good” and the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness in A Theory of Justice, to Kantian (and later Political) Constructivism and the Independence of Moral Theory, then the conception of moral personality and the distinction between the Reasonable and the Rational in Political Liberalism, and finally the rejection of a world state and the idea of a “realistic utopia” in Rawls’s Law of Peoples, one can discern that many of Rawls’s main ideas were deeply influenced by his understanding of Kant.4 Kant’s influence is most visible in Theory and in several essays leading up to Rawls’s so-called political turn in the mid-1980s, which was marked by the publication of “Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical” (1985) and “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus” (1987). I will hereafter refer to this decadeplus interlude of maximal Kantian influence as Rawls’s “Kantian period.”5 Prior to this period, Rawls mentioned Kant only sporadically, and after it, he explicitly rejected many essential elements of Kant’s thought, as we shall eventually see.6 Though several authors have written on Rawls’s Kantianism, only Stephen Darwall (1980) has systematically reviewed the Kantian elements in Rawls’s thought. Unfortunately, this excellent piece was written prior to the publication of Rawls’s “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” in which Rawls begins to reinterpret his own Kantianism. In what follows, therefore, I will offer a comprehensive Kantian reinterpretation of Rawls’s Theory using Kantian constructivism as an organizing framework; this reinterpretation will lay the groundwork for the reconstructive work I do in part 2 of the book and provide a useful and methodical review of the components of justice as fairness. In section II of this chapter, I define constructivism and describe its variants as well as its competitors. In section III, I discuss Kantian constructivism, investigate 4 Kantian Affinities 4. S. Freeman (2007b, 21). Freeman also claims that Kant’s political writings had relatively little influence on Rawls, the main exception being his work on international justice (22; see, e.g., LP 86). As I will argue in this chapter, the influence was more substantial than this, though Rawls rarely invokes Kant’s political works explicitly. 5. Samuel Freeman (CP xi) refers to this as a “transition stage” in Rawls’s thought, one leading to political liberalism. 6. The only time prior to Theory that...

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