Rawls Argument Against Exceptionalism

One of the core questions that any understanding of human behavior requires is to define, or at least to seek to comprehend, what constitutes the individual. This has been discussed in a range of fields, from what are understood as the definite sciences to psychology and political theory. The liberal tradition has historically valued the need for autonomy in the social reality of a political subject, which has been substantiated through a number of arguments, among which the most effective has been that of the Kantian understanding of the individual as constituted by one’s own ends in conjunction with having the ability to critically reflect and adapt those ends. Within the subfield of ideal theory, theses such as Rawls’ have based their construction

The relativist side argues that community itself is that which generates the conception of justice, while the universalist side emphasizes the inherent value of community. Among the latter, two prominent proposers are Michael Sandel and Johnny Taylor, who respectively challenge the idea of a self as prior to its ends (i.e. the liberal notion of autonomy), and the notion that an anti-perfectionist state follows from a commitment to individual liberty. Both raise a significant challenge to liberalism, specifically to its Kantian basis. This has been answered in a variety of ways, most significantly through Rawls’ reformulation of his theory in “Political Liberalism,” which was a strong basis for the pragmatic response that Stephen Macedo elucidates to the limits of community and social values. Throughout the paper, I will present the various reasonings of these thinkers, in addition to engaging critically both with the arguments themselves and on the validity of the responses that the liberal school

With regard to efficiency, the issues of a self prior to the community seems to fall short, in that it is too abstract to properly decide the basis, in a model such as Rawls’, of society and the political system. This may be so because the “unencumbered self” knows too little to properly direct the structure of the body politic so that it harmonizes with the effectual self of its subjects. Sandel locates this inconsistency in the way that, on one hand, liberalism sees individuals as “self-originating sources of valid claims,” while at the same time, as unencumbered selves, all characteristics are accidental, so “I cannot, as an individual, deserve anything at all.” (Sandel, 87, 89) For such, it appears that since the self is stripped bare of everything aside from autonomy itself, such self is incapable of protecting any attributes aside from said faculty, and can’t guide the creation or validation of a society. (Handout 18, 3) Hence, there is a need for the community to determine the direction of society as a