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chapter Twelve Rawls, Sports, and Liberal Legitimacy Thomas H. Murray, Ph.D., and Peter Murray In addition to having these two moral powers, persons also have at any given time a determinate conception of the good that they try to achieve. Such a conception must not be understood narrowly but rather as including a conception of what is valuable in human life. Thus, a conception of the good normally consists of a more or less determinate scheme of final ends, that is, ends we want to realize for their own sake, as well as attachments to other persons and loyalties to various groups and associations. These attachments and loyalties give rise to devotions and affections, and so the flourishing of the persons and associations who are the objects of these sentiments is also part of our conception of the good. We also connect with such a conception a view of our relation to the world—religious, philosophical, and moral—by reference to which the value and significance of our ends and attachments are understood. —John Rawls, Political Liberalism First: the rules of the game are in equilibrium: that is, from the start, the diamond was made just the right size, the pitcher’s mound just the right distance from home plate, etc., and this makes possible the marvelous plays, such as the double play. The physical layout of the game is perfectly adjusted to the human skills it is meant to display and call into graceful exercise. —John Rawls, letter to Owen Fiss, April 18, 1981, on why baseball is the best of all games I was not successful as a ball player, as it was a game of skill. —Casey Stengel Discussions of human nature often center on empirical questions about human tendencies and traits. Sport might be seen, then, as an expression of the natural desire for competition or domination. This way of approaching human nature makes it difficult to see how such an account could be normative, how it could help guide us in determining what we ought to do in the arena of sport. For example, it 180 Thomas H. Murray and Peter Murray might be that human beings have an innate tendency to aggression. But this bare descriptive fact about human beings is not enough for us to determine whether such a tendency is one that ought to be allowed, promoted, or suppressed. We must first answer the distinctively moral question of whether this natural human tendency to aggression is good or valuable. When we ask, what sort of treatment do we owe each other, it is not helpful to answer by pointing out that, in virtue of our aggression, we tend to physically assault each other. The fact of this natural tendency does not generate a normative permission that endorses such actions. John Rawls takes a distinctive approach to the use of ideas about human nature in moral and political debate. His theory of justice not only makes a place for such ideas but also serves as a model for how to generate conceptions of human nature that could serve as normatively important ideals. Rawls is concerned from the beginning with man’s moral nature, not with trying to generate normative ideas from merely descriptive accounts of human tendencies to aggression, to pleasure, and the like. There are many different appropriate accounts of humans’ moral nature, each account tailored to a different role. Rawls’s account is a political conception, an account of our moral nature relevant to our role as citizens. His theory of justice does not rely on other accounts of human nature, although it makes room for such accounts in political decision making. Generally, his approach involves identifying a framework of value implicit in a sphere of human endeavor and then determining what the moral nature of a person must be in order for them to find value in such a sphere. Human Nature, Politics, and Justice as Fairness What is the place, in a just Rawlsian society, of accounts of human nature in matters of moral debate and public policy? Rawls’s own justice as fairness, his theory of political justice, makes use of a “thin” account of human nature: an account of natural, human ends and capacities that are shared by or universal to all human beings insofar as they are capable of being citizens of a democratic society. A person’s full set of ends will be this narrow set supplemented by individual circumstances , personal preferences, and so...

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