John Rawls and the Common Good
An Introduction
Roberto Luppi
This book celebrates an important anniversary in contemporary philosophy: 50 years have passed since the publication of one of the most infuential works of the last century, A Theory of Justice by John Rawls ([1971] 1999a), a book that signaled a real watershed moment in its feld of research, as a result of which “Political philosophers . . . must either work within Rawls’ theory or explain why not,” as Robert Nozick remarked (1974, 183). Rawls’s theorizing was the basis for the afrmation of a particular vision of liberalism, one that was aimed at both protecting individual freedoms and promoting the economic and social bases of equality. This vision has been extremely infuential in the philosophical refection of the last 50 years, on issues such as justice and reciprocity, society and institutions, equality and freedom, generating discussions among thinkers belonging to a broad range of theoretical convictions, nationalities, and cultures.
As the title suggests, however, this book aims to celebrate the 50th anniversary from a perspective, which has rarely been applied to the philosopher’s thought, namely that of the “common good.” Since the 1980s, in fact, one of the focal points of the debate surrounding Rawls’s work has been the so-called communitarian critique of liberalism. Indeed, great philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer, and Charles Taylor have accused Rawls and liberalism more generally of relying on an individualistic and abstract vision of human beings (or “unencumbered selves,” as Sandel writes), thus overlooking central aspects of collective life related to the concepts of community, virtue, civic friendship, solidarity, and so on.1 In short, one of the principal subjects of said criticism was the Rawlsian ‘lack of interest’ in the concepts and values that refer to the common good.2 This position is aptly summed up by David Hollenbach:
the idea of the common good is in trouble. John Rawls speaks for many observers in the West today when he says that the pluralism of the contemporary landscape makes it impossible to envision a social
good on which all can agree. This is the intellectual and theoretical challenge to the common good today: diversity of visions of the good life makes it difcult or even impossible to attain a shared vision of the common good. Such a shared vision cannot survive as an intellectual goal if all ideas of the good are acknowledged to be partial, incomplete, and incompatible. This pluralism also makes it impossible to achieve a strong form of social unity in practice without repression or tyranny. This is the practical challenge: pursuit of a common good as envisioned by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ignatius must be abandoned as a practical social objective incompatible with modern freedoms.
(Hollenbach 2004, 9)
Although Rawls has often been the main subject of these communitarian objections, they constitute a more general critique of liberalism. With this term, we refer here to that philosophical doctrine, which initially spread throughout Europe following the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries and tried to limit the power – and, at times, abuses – of government (especially in the form of absolute monarchy), guaranteeing citizens equal freedoms and rights, which gradually came to be recognized as inviolable. At the root of this doctrine was the awareness that people naturally tend to disagree on central issues of their existence, starting from the idea of ‘the good life.’ Being reasonable has thus ceased to be seen as a guarantee of unanimity, and it has been accepted that, in matters of supreme importance, people are destined to disagree. By virtue of this conviction, the decisive question for liberal theory has thus shifted from the defnition of an idea of good, which a community must pursue, to the development of just and fair terms of coexistence, which are then accompanied by the adopting of diferent conceptions of the good life by individuals (Larmore 1996, 121–123; Schwarzenbach 2009, 18–20).
As stated by a signifcant portion of the liberal tradition, consequently, rather than to personal ends and interests, or the development of ideals of human perfection in citizens, the state should turn its attention to maintaining peace and order, the protection of rights and of individual freedoms, and the promotion of material prosperity. In short, liberalism has afrmed the need for state neutrality toward the worldviews of its citizens. This is highlighted by Dworkin, among others:
It is a fundamental, almost defning, tenet of liberalism that the government of a political community should be tolerant of the diferent and often antagonistic convictions its citizens have about the right way to live: that it should be neutral, for example, between citizens who insist that a good life is necessarily a religious one and other citizens who fear religion as the only dangerous superstition.
(Dworkin 1995, 191)
State neutrality toward the diferent visions of good is believed – especially by the critics of liberalism – to be coupled with the afrmation of individualism (and self-interest) on the social level. They sum up the liberal society in the image of an agreement between individuals characterized by a plurality of goals and conceptions of good and who share little or nothing except the common concern for self-preservation and the pursuit – or safeguarding – of prosperity. Due to their accentuated individualism and the exaltation of autonomy and independence at the expense of afliation and collective action, these societies are accused of taking the form of a summation of self-referential individual rights and interests, in which the intervention of the community, and especially of the state, appears as a continued interference in the free action of the individual – tolerated almost exclusively in areas such as public order, in which the impossibility of single persons to individually achieve the desired results is manifested. The liberal state is thus charged with creating “isolated, monadic citizens who care only about their own good, little about the welfare of their fellows or their overall political community, and who generally lack the civic virtues needed to sustain a viable liberal polity” (McCabe 1998, 558).
The inevitable result of this overall image – so the critics go on – is thus the impossibility of the liberal state to stimulate the pursuit of the common good. The latter must be considered the good of the community as a whole, as a social body, and not as the mere sum of the goods of individuals. It takes the form of a moral attitude, which consists of a set of shared values concerning what we owe one another, as citizens who are bound together in the same society, and reminds people of the importance of interpersonal bonds, virtues, and collective action in view of personal fourishing and societal welfare. The achievement of this kind of good is thus seen by some as irreconcilable with the life of a liberal society. In this regard, Galston writes:
Liberalism is said to undermine community, to restrict unduly opportunities for democratic participation, to create inegalitarian hierarchy, and to reinforce egoistic social confict at the expense of the common good. Community, democracy, equality, virtue – these constitute the mantra of contemporary antiliberalism.
(Galston 1991, 42)
In contrast to what has been argued by many critics, this book attempts to fnd some form of reconciliation between the liberal tradition and the concept of the common good, preserving the great achievements of liberalism – such as the afrmation of freedom and rights, political and religious tolerance, and interpersonal respect – at the same time combining them with the key values of the common good. Such an attempt will be developed through the analysis of one of the greatest liberal thinkers of the last century: John Rawls.
Over the years, there have been attempts to demonstrate the presence of common ground between Rawls and scholars working within a communitarian perspective or, in any case, to highlight that the framework created by the philosopher cannot do without concepts akin to those that give substance to the defnition of the common good. With this book, we do not want to return to the debate, which has animated the communitarian critique of liberalism; this can now be considered long concluded. Nor does this work aim to ofer an incontrovertible demonstration of the possibility of a communitarian interpretation of Rawlsian theory. Fifty years after the frst publication of A Theory of Justice, however, an exhaustive and general analysis of the relationship between Rawlsian thought and the crucial values, which are constitutive of the idea of the common good, is still needed: this is precisely the purpose of this book.
It is Rawls himself who, in A Theory of Justice, emphasizes that he aspires to fnd a balance between certain individualistic aspects of his theory of justice and the value of the community, deeply connected with the “social nature of mankind” (TJ, 458):
justice as fairness has a central place for the value of community, and how this comes about depends upon the Kantian interpretation. I discuss this topic in Part Three. The essential idea is that we want to account for the social values, for the intrinsic good of institutional, community, and associative activities, by a conception of justice that in its theoretical basis is individualistic. . . . From this conception, however individualistic it might seem, we must eventually explain the value of community. Otherwise the theory of justice cannot succeed. (TJ, 233–234, emphasis added)
The idea underlying this book is that Rawls (at least in part) succeeds in his attempt, and the demonstration of this is ofered by a groundbreaking examination of the values that most distance the philosopher’s work from a purely procedural reading, thus seeking elements of dialogue and intersection between the concept of the common good and his philosophical system.
I. Rawls and the Common Good
A fundamental feature of the common good is that it is internal to the requirements of a social relationship (Hussain 2018). In every community, it must be understood as the culmination of a model of practical reasoning, which fosters the establishing of a political and social relationship among citizens, aimed at attending to the central afairs of their coexistence. However, one of the fundamental aspects of this idea lies in its difcult – perhaps impossible? – defnition. It is one and multiple, and its edges are always blurred; at times, it is almost a feeling, destined to remain
in the form of an inspiring ideal of collective action, but never entirely discernible or achievable in full. As Sluga writes:
we can envisage the common good in very diferent ways, as high and as low, as wide and as narrow. We can speak of this common good in the language of justice, of freedom, security, order, morality, happiness, individual well-being, prosperity, progress, and what have you. We can, moreover, envisage the community for which such a good is sought in diferent ways: as tribal, local, national, international, or even global, as egalitarian or hierarchical in its order, as traditional or freely constituted, as unifed or divided. And we can fnally also envisage the search itself in various ways: as organized or spontaneous, as guided or as cooperative, as deliberate or merely implicit, as successful or thwarted.
(Sluga 2014, 2)
In the history of political thought, its manifold nature has made it possible to trace the common good in a plurality of theories. From ancient Greece to Christian thought, the common good has often been interpreted as the testing ground against which not only the formal legitimacy but also the intrinsic goodness of any form of government is measured. The common good has thus been observed as a category that is both ethical and political – spheres that are seen as intertwined (Campanini 2014, 16–17). It is precisely this last connection that the political culture of modernity has tended to reject, focusing the overall evaluation of state power more on legitimacy than on value judgments. Inevitably, this development has contributed to the gradual loss of centrality of the concept of the common good in political and philosophical refection.
However, in the second half of the 20th century, this concept was gradually rediscovered through the work of scholars interested in both the Christian tradition and classical philosophy. Hand in hand with this rediscovery, important disaccords with large sectors of the liberal tradition have nevertheless surfaced, preventing the revival of the common good as a basic element of contemporary philosophy. As outlined earlier, one of the distinctive features of liberalism is in fact the recognition of ethical, religious, and philosophical pluralism as a central and irrepressible, or rather welcome, trait of today’s societies. Related to this is the spreading of both religious and political tolerance as a crucial element in order to allow peaceful coexistence and cooperation within plural communities. A signifcant portion of the liberal tradition has often considered these two very elements, pluralism and the related practice of tolerance, as difcult to reconcile with the idea of the common good, which instead is believed to rely on a solid social bond, which can only be ensured by the sharing of the same idea of good within community (Downing and Thigpen 1993, 1050).
The fracture that has emerged between ethics and politics must therefore be looked upon as one of the principal reasons for the ‘crisis’ of the concept of the common good and its subsequent relegation to the background, in the context of liberal philosophical contemporaneity. However, it is possible to imagine the rediscovery of this concept based on the idea of morality , rather than that of ethics . Here, morality is understood as that sphere, which includes citizens’ collective and public life, the sphere that is connected to their system of cooperation and its rules, practices, and virtues. If, given today’s pluralism, it is impossible to fnd a common good, which comprehensively absorbs the lives of citizens, related to their idea of the good life, we can trace it in what is authentically common to the whole community: indeed, its morality. This is the idea John Rawls refers to in his interview for Commonweal in 1998. When asked about the presence of an idea of the common good in his theory, he replied:
You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that’s a mistake. For example, you might say that, if citizens are acting for the right reasons in a constitutional regime, then regardless of their comprehensive doctrines they want every other citizen to have justice. So you might say they’re all working together to do one thing, namely to make sure every citizen has justice. Now that’s not the only interest they all have, but it’s the single thing they’re all trying to do. In my language, they’re striving toward one single end, the end of justice for all citizens.
(CP, 622)
What emerges is the conviction that a liberal state, while active in preserving the neutrality among the various conceptions of the good, is able to ofer its citizens a fundamental end in relation to which they can act collectively: it is the “mutual good of mutual justice” (Rawls 1988, 274). The Rawlsian idea of the common good is therefore characterized by interests that the members of a community can publicly welcome and intrinsically value by virtue of their status as citizens, committed to respecting the principles of public morality. This status takes precedence over other statuses and afliations that characterize the identity of the individual as a private person. Citizens are thus deemed to have a relational obligation to mutually take care of the interests connected to the “position of equal citizenship,” shared by everyone (TJ, 82–83, 217). These interests concern the respect for and protection of the principles of justice and the institutions that are inspired by them. The status of equal citizenship and its mutual recognition are crucial, above all, in order to highlight what unites all members of the community, partially setting aside diferences and divisions and preventing – as far as possible – the rise of social envy and erroneous competition among individuals and groups (Hussain 2018).
In essence, a conception of social life is put forward by Rawls, by virtue of which everyone has a fundamental interest in ensuring that certain basic social conditions prevail. The discussion, deliberation, and action of citizens with a view to the common good allow them to afrm a principle of reciprocity (and civic friendship) that leads everyone to give and receive justice and mutual consideration. Thus, while not (necessarily) adopting supererogatory attitudes, each individual plays their part in a collective dynamic in view of the interests of their associates, as these interests are common to all. Moreover, this kind of society ofers everyone the possibility to realize their personal conception of the good, in the form of their life plans. These goods should not be seen as exclusively private but often shared within the multiple associations that make up the social body. In this plurality of life experiences, citizens feel pleasure and pride and “realize their common or matching nature,” which in turn is inevitably part of the common good of the Rawlsian community (TJ, 459; cf. Keys 2006, 35).
In this book, we will see how referring to justice as the basic framework for the common good opens the door to other values and concepts, which, although connected to justice itself, have much more substantive features than those acknowledged by the critics of John Rawls. Contrary to the idea that he understands justice as “a rather limited good; [as] the good of a cold, modern, and essentially heartless world in which the issue between us is only what you owe me and what I owe you,” the book will explore the far from marginal role that concepts, such as for example that of virtue, friendship, faith, or fraternity, play in the theory of justice of the philosopher. In line with this perspective, readers will thus judge for themselves whether the Rawlsian theory actually provides a “particular, distinctively narrow, and essentially Protestant view of the common good” or not (Sluga 2014, 3–4).
Here, however, it is important to dwell – albeit briefy – on another point, that is to say on whether the vision set out in this work is truly able to speak to today’s society, a society that since 1971 has undergone tremendous changes: technological revolution and globalized capitalism, surveillance and interdependence, digital democracy and populisms, new inequalities and balances of power, migration and climate change are just some of the crucial features of today’s global village, which now takes on a very diferent appearance from that of John Rawls’s time. Yet the idea from which this collective work springs forth is that the philosopher’s thought continues to speak to us and to ofer important insights on debates so crucial to the history of humanity that they are likely destined to endure forevermore, such as those on justice and freedom, equality, and the common good. It is precisely on this last concept that doubts, questions, and criticism will likely focus: does it still make sense to talk about the common good in a globalized world like today’s, in which its traditional frames of reference (family, city, and state) seem to gradually
lose importance? And if so, is it not necessary to embrace a universal perspective on the common good, given the growing interdependence between the various areas of the world and the peoples who inhabit them? At the same time, however, does such a universal perspective not render this concept meaningless?
On the one hand, what arises is the thought that a common good referred only to the polis, as in the ancient world, or to the nation, as in the modern world, no longer makes sense in the era of globalization and with the arising of problems, which require a global vision. Environmental issues and COVID-19 represent only two, albeit very relevant, examples in this regard. On the other hand, however, it is possible to put forward the opinion that the global broadening of the concept of the common good leads to such a ‘softening’ of its contents, as to render them devoid of meaning and power of infuence.
This book does not take a stand on the possibility of rethinking the concept of the common good from a global perspective or otherwise. This approach is not taken into consideration here for (at least) two reasons: one, linked to the philosopher at the center of the analysis; another of a more general nature. In fact, adopting an approach that cost him greatly in terms of criticism, Rawls devoted his refection predominantly to the state as a single entity, going in search of a political conception of justice that was applicable within a constitutional democracy seen as an island, separate and independent from any surrounding realities. Only later, in The Law of Peoples, did he move on to consider issues of international politics, which ultimately occupied a rather marginal space in the general structure of his thought. This leads to the adoption of a more traditional perspective on the common good here, addressing the community – at most, on a national scale – but certainly not humanity as a whole. Second, at a time in which the implementation of a policy aimed at the common good appears so necessary and yet, concurrently, so distant, it might be advisable – even from a theoretical point of view – to focus on the state level rather than on a macro reality, such as a global one. Although this is an approach that will not please some, the essential idea is that, when a house is in disarray, as our beloved humanity in many ways is, to put things in order one must frst concentrate on the single rooms and then, only subsequently, should one focus on the whole. It is already difcult to reconcile the ‘good’ of a local reality with that of the state, given recurring tensions and conficts, be they apparent or hidden. Even more complex issues arise when the criterion of the common good is transferred to the level of political, economic, and social choices to be adopted on the world level. Nevertheless, as the example of the house brings to light, they are not conficting or incompatible types of good: in order to be sustainable, in fact, the common good of a country must not be thought of in contrast with that of other state entities, near or far from it. Rather, the two types of common good are complementary and – in some ways – follow on from one another.
II. Chapter Outlines
In short, is it possible to trace an idea of the common good in John Rawls’s thought? This work concludes that it is. Although he uses this term with absolute parsimony, my opinion – and I venture to say also that of the other contributors – is that Rawls has outlined a specifc idea of the common good for his well-ordered society. A common good that is inextricably linked to the idea of justice, but which must not be understood as something ‘monolithic’ and ‘well-circumscribed’ or ‘circumscribable.’ I rather like to think of it as a mosaic , never defned in its entirety and made of multiform pieces: some larger and well-polished, others smaller or faded in color; all, however, equally fundamental in order to build the greater, overall image depicting the Rawlsian idea of the common good. What the contributors of this book do is just that: put the pieces of this mosaic under their microscope, observing and analyzing them in detail and, at times, turning them upside down.
Therefore, in this book, the goal is not to focus on the Rawlsian defnition of the common good as such, nor to defnitively judge whether it is feasible or not. The belief is that an approach of this kind would lead to an overall image that is always lacking in some parts, due to the multifaceted nature of this notion. The approach is rather to concentrate on a multiplicity of concepts, all intimately linked to the category of the common good, in the hope that from this multiplicity the reader will be able to extrapolate its uniqueness, that is, what unites these elements and allows them to ensure the substance and multiform vitality that are essential if the concept of the common good wants to make its contribution within the community it addresses.
In Chapter 1, Daniel A. Dombrowski devotes himself to the analysis of the concept of community in Rawlsian theory. To be exact, the chapter contains a defense of Rawlsian, political communitarianism, which is seen as a moderate stance between the weak communitarianism found in Hobbes and related thinkers, and the strong communitarianism found in Aristotle and the many thinkers infuenced by him. Thus, the characteristics of the Rawlsian political community are highlighted, wherein there is widespread acceptance by the population of a certain conception of justice (contra Hobbesian views), but where there is not widespread acceptance of any view of the good or of any particular comprehensive doctrine (contra Aristotelian views).
In Chapter 2 on faith and the common good, David A. Reidy sets out the “fdeism” to which Rawls claims to have been committed throughout his adult life. Taking into account the important diferences between A Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism, and The Law of Peoples, the author shows how this fdeism relates in each case to the common good at which Rawls believed free equals properly aimed in political and
law-making activity, suggesting that in his philosophical work Rawls was, among other things, “turning inside out” his fdeism.
In Chapter 3, Marco Martino deals with fraternity. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls associates his diference principle with the concept of fraternity, drawing attention to the revolutionary tripartite motto of 1789, “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Through the diference principle, Rawls attempts to think rationally about fraternity, seeing it as something intrinsic to political processes, rather than external to them. Martino traces the evolution of this reasoning: in his investigation, the crucial features of the ‘indirect’ treatment of the principle of fraternity developed by Rawls are brought to light, even if ultimately it is concluded that the philosopher does not provide fraternity with an adequate theoretical foundation.
In Chapter 4, Ruth Abbey examines what Rawls says in A Theory of Justice about friendship as an interpersonal relationship. In particular, she underlines the key points in TJ in which friendship plays a crucial role: as one of society’s smaller associations or social unions, as a human good, and – to be exact – as the clearest of Rawls’s examples of a complementary good, as a central aspect in the morality of association stage of moral development, and in his discussion of guilt and shame. Furthermore, Abbey shows that a focus on friendship brings some important Aristotelian features of the philosopher’s thinking to light.
In Chapter 5, Elizabeth Edenberg deals with the question of whether Rawls’s theory of justice is capable of secure justice for women and how this relates to the common good. In particular, Edenberg points out how many injustices rooted in the gender structure of society were justifed by appealing to the common good. Yet to properly account for how a just society can meet the needs of the common good, surely the common good should be good for all members of that society, rather than relying on subordinating some to allow for the fourishing of others. Edenberg underlines how by Rawls’s own measures of justice that rely on the acceptability of principles of justice to people understood as free and equal, a sexist society or any society that seeks the common good through the exploitation or subordination of some groups to others would not pass Rawls’s own hypothetical acceptability test. Nevertheless, Rawls’s own discussion of gender justice has been the subject of extensive feminist critique: both Rawls’s discussions of gender justice and the critical responses to them are the subject of the chapter.
In Chapter 6, Paul Voice goes through the analysis of the concept of love in Rawlsian theory. Since Rawls wants to leave room for citizens to love for reasons and in ways that align with their idea of the good, Voice outlines that love relationships are only partially constrained by the philosopher’s two principles of justice. From this observation, the author argues that the partial constraints on love, which Rawls’s theory of justice imposes, are insufcient, resulting in systematic injustices that ought to be corrected. However, Voice also claims that love and justice
John Rawls and the Common Good 11 can be aligned and reconciled both with Rawls’s principles of justice and with his own notion of love. To this end, the author advances a notion of proper or just love.
In Chapter 7, M. Victoria Costa examines the role of the political liberties in Rawls’s theory of justice and discusses how they ought to be distributed to promote justice and the common good. Her chapter acknowledges that one way to defend the equal distribution of the political liberties appeals to their contribution to self-respect. But, since Rawls holds that the fair value of the political liberties ought to be guaranteed, as well as the equal distribution thereof, Costa argues that it is a concern with preventing political domination that best explains the measures required to guarantee their fair value. The twin requirements of equal distribution and fair value are seen to contribute to the common good by operating at the institutional level. But these requirements, Costa highlights, can be supplemented by a principle: the principle of the common good, guiding the ways in which citizens interact with each other when they make use of their political liberties.
In Chapter 8, Paul Weithman deals with the concepts of “reciprocity” and “justifcation” in Political Liberalism. Liberalism requires that political arrangements be justifable to those who are subject to them. Some critics argue that any view committed to this Justifability Condition is caught in a dilemma, which arises when we ask whether the condition applies to itself. The author argues that Rawlsian political liberalism avoids the dilemma that self-application is thought to imply. The aim of Rawlsian political liberalism is to identify principles citizens have to honor to relate to one another as free equals. Weithman’s answer shows that Rawlsian political liberalism is the most defensible form of liberalism because of its commitment to a form of reciprocity that is needed for our politics.
In Chapter 9, Boettcher focuses his analysis on the concept of respect, in reference to the Rawlsian idea of public reason. According to the latter, government ofcials and even ordinary citizens should decide fundamental matters of law and policy on the basis of reasons that are in principle acceptable to others in light of some reasonable political conception of justice along with other publicly accessible standards of evaluation. One requirement of public reason is restraint, that is, the willingness to refrain from supporting such laws and policies solely on the basis of nonpublic reason. Boettcher revisits Rawls’s remarks on respect and self-respect and argues that the restraint requirement is based primarily on an underlying duty of mutual respect. However, the author outlines how an ideal of civic friendship plays an important complementary but secondary role in grounding the main requirements of public reason.
In Chapter 10, Jon Mandle describes two basic roles played by the idea of a sense of justice in Rawls’s theory. On the one hand, he examines Rawls’s characterization of justice as fairness itself as an attempt to
describe our sense of justice in refective equilibrium. On the other hand, Mandle analyzes TJ’s account of the psychological development of a sense of justice in individuals, which is part of Rawls’s argument for the stability of a well-ordered society – the other component being his argument for the congruence of the right and the good. Mandle highlights that understanding how the moral psychology described by Rawls sets the stage for the congruence argument helps to clarify the nature of refective equilibrium and the Rawlsian vision of moral justifcation.
Chapter 11 analyzes the role of cooperative virtues in Rawlsian thought and, in particular, ofers a reading of the twofold value they have within his framework: they are seen to have an intrinsic value in the life of his citizens and, at the same time, an instrumental one from the point of view of society. The intrinsic value of cooperative virtues concerns the fact that, without their acquisition, the individual does not become a moral person, that is, a fully cooperative member of society. However, cooperative virtues also play an essential role from an instrumental point of view: their presence in citizens constitutes in fact the condicio sine qua non for a well-ordered society to be able to frst establish itself and then remain stable over time.
Notes
1. This accusation has been accompanied by the criticism against the preponderant role assigned by Rawlsian theory to procedural aspects in the attempt to maintain a position of neutrality toward the diferent worldviews competing on the social stage. Liberalism has thus been accused of indiference toward the multiple conceptions aimed at the fourishing of the human being, the so-called privatization of good (MacIntyre 1990). It is important to underline that the communitarian criticisms have especially turned to the early works of Rawls, pertaining to the period of his philosophical theorizing before the publication of Political Liberalism (1993). At the same time, it is also useful to mention that, with the ascription as “communitarian,” some notable philosophers of this group such as Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Sandel have not always been ‘satisfed.’
2. The book does not analyze the communitarian objections in detail, nor does it aspire to examine whether they are well founded or not. On this topic, see Buchanan (1989), Gutmann (1985), and Mulhall and Swift (2003).
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