PHIL 336
Political Liberalism and its Critics Fall 2023
Division II Writing Skills

Political liberalism has been both celebrated and lamented. The philosopher John Rawls is widely credited with reviving liberalism in the late 20th century and providing its most persuasive defense. In this tutorial, we’ll read portions of Rawls’ major works, A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, and trace how his theory evolved in response to an array of critics, including libertarians, perfectionists, communitarians, feminist philosophers, and critical race theorists. Among other things, these critics challenged Rawls’ interpretation and defense of the social contract framework, the ideals of freedom and equality, the content of principles of justice, political neutrality about the good, the nature of the self, the division between public and private spheres, and the distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory. We’ll examine these criticisms in depth. If time permits, we’ll also look briefly at some recent post-Rawlsian debates about the nature of distributive justice (e.g., luck vs. relational egalitarianism, or global justice).