Justice as Fairness: A Quietist Reading of Rawls

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to advance Burton Dreben's suggestion that the works of John Rawls and Ludwig Wittgenstein are closely related by seeking to clear two pervasive misunderstandings in reading the work of Rawls, namely, that he decisively broke with the utilitarian approach to moral and political philosophy and that his work is broken up into two distinct segments. It is argued that his work reveals a continuity which in the philosophical sphere is marked by a Wittgenstein-inspired quietism. In this methodological journey Rawls explores Kantian thought in a way which facilitates his quietism much to the contrary of what is usually taken to be the case. Justice as fairness remains therefore a practical issue. It is hoped that this clarification contributes to the broader movement towards justice, democracy and freedom.

Acknowledgements

Parts of the paper were presented at a Workshop on Development Studies at DESTIN, London School of Economics in June 2007, and have also been incorporated in chapters accepted for two forthcoming anthologies edited by Vibhuti Patel, and by Chandan Sengupta and Stuart Corbridge. The author is grateful to all of them for fruitful discussions and critical comments. Thanks are also very much due to the two anonymous reviewers for their relevant suggestions.

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Parthasarathi Mondal

Centre for Development Studies, School of Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, PB 8313, Deonar, Sion-Trombay Road, Mumbai 400088, India. Email: [email protected]