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Cohen & Nagel on Rawls's Religion

By Lawrence Solum

Several readers have suggested that I post a link to John Rawls: On My Religion: How Rawls's political philosophy was influenced by his religion by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel in the Times Literary Supplement. Here is a taste:

Those who have studied Rawls?s work, and even more, those who knew him personally, are aware of a deeply religious temperament that informed his life and writings, whatever may have been his beliefs. He says, for example, that political philosophy aims at a defence of reasonable faith, in particular reasonable faith in the possibility of a just constitutional democracy; he says that the recognition of this possibility shapes our attitude ?toward the world as a whole?; he suggests that if a reasonably just society is not possible, one might appropriately wonder whether ?it is worthwhile for human beings to live on earth?; and he concludes A Theory of Justice with powerfully moving remarks about how the original position enables us to see the social world and our place in it sub specie aeternitatis. Religion and religious conviction are also important as themes within Rawls?s political philosophy. For example, his case for the first principle of justice ? that of equal basic liberties ? aims to ?generalize the principle of religious toleration?. More broadly, his theory of justice is in part a response to the problem of how political legitimacy can be achieved despite religious conflict, and how, among citizens holding distinct religious views, political justification can proceed without reference to religious conviction.

These concerns lie at the heart of Rawls?s later account of political liberalism. Rawls?s own attitudes towards religion and their development over time are thus of extraordinary interest, both personally and for the understanding of his thought. The undergraduate thesis and the later reflections are relevant to such understanding in two different ways. First, they display the profound engagement with and knowledge of religion that form the background of Rawls?s later views on the importance of separating religion and politics. Unlike many liberals, Rawls was not the product of a secular culture. Though his Episcopalian upbringing was, as he says, only conventionally religious, everything changed during his last two years at Princeton. He developed the religious convictions so vividly expressed in the thesis, which conveys a strong sense of the reality of sin, faith, and the divine presence, and which has as its first ?fundamental presupposition? that ?there is a being whom Christians call God and who has revealed Himself in Christ Jesus?. Rawls?s emphasis throughout his mature work on the importance in the lives of the faithful of religious convictions ? he describes them as ?non-negotiable? and as ?binding absolutely? ? and the need for a theory of justice to take them seriously drew on his personal experience of religious faith.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on April 03, 2009 (boomark / email).