Rawls against Rawls: on the political value of social association
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/eps.5.1.170Keywords:
freedom of association, political liberalism, non-political associations, social association, self-respectAbstract
This study focuses on the paradigmatic category of social association to question the general treatment of freedom of association in theories of justice. Social associations are organised, voluntary, and secondary associations that do not have any particular economic or political function and are not related to any external authority. This category is deployed to re-examine the relationship between freedom of association and the two moral powers. I support the argument that freedom of social association is not only an institutional condition for conscience, as stated by Rawls, but also has an evident direct connection with both moral powers. In particular, I show that it enables individuals to lead a life that they collectively affirm to be reasonable and valuable and develop a sense of value and confidence in their own abilities. This is the fundamental associative interest we have in self-respect, which has been rendered philosophically invisible in political liberalism by the category of nonpolitical association. I show that social associations and the right to establish such an association have a special importance for self-respect, and especially, for its social bases and I argue that institutions should provide citizens opportunities for the personal circumstances of self-respect in ensuring the social conditions necessary to establish social associations.
References
Anderson, J. H., & Honneth, A. (2005). Autonomy, vulnerability, recognition, and justice. In J. Christman & J. Anderson, (Eds.), Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New Essays (pp. 127–149). Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511610325.008
Baehr, A. (1996). Toward a new feminist liberalism: Okin, Rawls, and Habermas. Hypatia, 11(1), 49–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1996.tb00506.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1996.tb00506.x
Berry, J. M. (1999). The rise of citizen groups. In T. Skocpol & M. P. Fiorina (Eds.), Civic Engagement in American Democracy (pp. 367–394). Brookings Institution Press.
Blanc, S. & Al-Amoudi, I. (2013). Corporate institutions in a weakened welfare state: A Rawlsian perspective. Business Ethics Quarterly, 23(4), 497–525. https://doi.org/10.5840/beq201323438 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/beq201323438
Brennan, J. (2019). Against the moral powers test of basic liberty. European Journal of Philosophy, 28(2), 492–505. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12497 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12497
Brownlee, K. (2015). Freedom of association: It’s not what you think. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 35(2), 267–282. https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqu018 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqu018
Brownlee, K. & Jenkins, D. (2019, May 3). Freedom of association. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-association/
Cohen, J. L. & Arato, A. (1994). Civil society and political theory. MIT Press.
Cohen, J. & Rogers, J. (1992). Secondary associations and democratic governance. Politics & Society, 20(4), 392–472. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0032329292020004003 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329292020004003
Cole, G. D. H. (1920). Social theory. Frederick A. Stokes Company.
Cordelli, C. (2015). Justice as fairness and relational resources. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23(1), 86–110. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12036 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12036
De Marneffe, P. (1998). Rights, reasons, and freedom of association. In A. Gutmann (Ed.), Freedom of Association (pp. 35–63). Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691219387-007
De Tocqueville, A. (2010). De la démocratie en Amérique. Flammarion.
De Vries, B. (2020). Is multiculturalism discriminatory? Res Publica, 26, 201–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-019-09433-4 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-019-09433-4
Delmas, C. (2015). On Michael Walzer’s The Obligation to Disobey. Ethics, 125(4), 1145–1147. https://doi.org/10.1086/680882 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/680882
Dewey, J. & Rogers, M. L. (2012). The public and its problems: An essay in political inquiry. Penn State Press.
Diamond, L. (1999). Developing democracy: Toward consolidation. JHU Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.56021/9780801860140
Edenberg, E. (2018). Growing up sexist: Challenges to Rawlsian stability. Law and Philos, 37, 577–612. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-017-9325-1 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10982-017-9325-1
Everingham, C. (2018). Social justice and the politics of community. Routledge.
Eyal, N. (2005). ‘Perhaps the most important primary good’: Self-respect and Rawls’s Principles of Justice. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 4(2), 195–219. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X05052538 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X05052538
Fischer, M. (1997). Rawls, associations, and the political conception of justice. Journal of Social Philosophy, 28(3), 31–42. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9833.1997.tb00386.x
Fung, A. (2003). Associations and democracy: Between theories, hopes, and realities. Annual Review of Sociology, 29, 515–539. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100134 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100134
Freeman, S. (1996). Original Position. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/
Girard, C. (2016). Freedom of expression: A survey. Raisons Politiques, 63, 13–33. https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.063.0013 DOI: https://doi.org/10.3917/rai.063.0013
Gutmann, A. (1998). Freedom of association. Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691219387
Habermas, J. (1991). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT Press
Herzog, L. (2018). Reclaiming the system: Moral responsibility, divided labour, and the role of organizations in society. Oxford University Press.
Hirst, P. (2013). Associative democracy: New forms of economic and social governance. John Wiley & Sons.
Ignatieff, M. (1995). On civil society: Why Eastern Europe’s revolutions could succeed. Foreign Affairs, 29, 128–136. https://doi.org/10.2307/20047047 DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/20047047
Kordana, K. & Tabachnick D. (2008). The Rawlsian view of private ordering. Social Philosophy and Policy, 25(2), 288–307. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052508080278 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052508080278
Krishnamurthy, M. (2012). Reconceiving Rawls’s arguments for equal political liberty and its fair value: On our higher-order interests. Social Theory and Practice, 38, 258–278. https://doi.org/10.5840/SOCTHEORPRACT201238215 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract201238215
Krishnamurthy, M. (2013). Completing Rawls’s arguments for equal political liberty and its fair value: The argument from self-respect. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 43(2), 179–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2013.816177 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2013.816177
Laborde, C. (2017). Liberalism’s religion. Harvard University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674981560
Landemore, H. & Ferreras, I. (2016). In defense of workplace democracy: Towards a justification of the firm–State analogy. Political Theory, 44 (1), 53–81. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0090591715600035 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591715600035
Leiter, B. (2014). Why tolerate religion. Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691163543.003.0004
Leonard, M. (2004). Bonding and bridging social capital: Reflections from Belfast. Sociology, 38(5), 927–944. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0038038504047176 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038504047176
Lloyd, S. A. (1995). Situating a feminist criticism of John Rawls’s political liberalism. Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, 28, 1319–1344.
McClain, L. C. (2004). Negotiating gender and (free and equal) citizenship: The place of associations. Fordham Law Review, 72, 1569–1598.
Mckinnon, C. (2000). Exclusion rules and self-respect. The Journal of Value Inquiry, 34(4), 491–505. https://doi.org/10.2307/761990 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1004737330659
Mc Mahon, C. (1994). Authority and democracy: A general theory of government and management. Princeton University Press.
Martin, N. (2017). Conceptions of the good, rivalry, and liberal neutrality. Political Philosophy, 20(2), 143–162. https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2015.1110444 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13698230.2015.1110444
Mitnick, E. J. (2018). Rights, groups, and self-invention: Group-Differentiated rights in Liberal Theory. Taylor and Francis. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351150002
Muniz-Fraticelli, V. (2016). The structure of pluralism. Oxford University Press.
Norman, W. (2015). Rawls on markets and corporate governance. Business Ethics Quarterly, 25(1), 29–64. https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2015.16 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/beq.2015.16
Okin, S. (1994). Political liberalism, justice, and gender. Ethics, 105(1), 23–43. https://doi.org/10.1086/293677 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/293677
Okin, S. (2008). Justice, gender, and the family. Basic Books.
O’Neill, M. (2008) Three Rawlsian routes towards economic democracy. Revue de Philosophie Économique, 9(1), 29–55.
Parsons, T. (1971). The system of modern societies. Prentice-Hall.
Pillai, K., Hodgkinson, G., Kalyanaram, G., & Nair, S. (2017). The negative effects of social capital in organizations: A review and extension. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(1), 97–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12085 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12085
Putnam, R., Leonardi, R., & Nanetti R. Y. (1994). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400820740
Putnam, R. D. (2001). Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community. Touchstone Books. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/358916.361990
Queralt, J. & González-Ricoy, I. (2021). The ballot and the wallet: Self-Respect and the fair value of political liberties. European Journal of Philosophy, 29(2), 410–424. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12581 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12581
Rawls, J. (2005a). A Theory of Justice. Original Edition. Harvard University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvjf9z6v
Rawls, J. (2005b). Political liberalism. Columbia University Press
Rosenblum, N. (1998). Membership and morals: The personal uses of pluralism in America. Princeton University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691187693
Schemmel, C. (2011). Distributive and relational equality. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 11(2), 123–148. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1470594X11416774 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X11416774
Schemmel, C. (2019). Real self-respect and its social bases. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 49(5), 628–651. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2018.1463840 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2018.1463840
Shiffrin, S. L. (2005). What Is Really Wrong with Compelled Association?. Northwestern University Law Review, 99(2), 839–888.
Stark, C. A. (2012). Rawlsian self-respect. In M. C. Timmons (Ed.), Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics (pp. 238–261). Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199662951.003.0010
Tomasi, J. (2013). Free market fairness. Princeton University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400842391
Verba, S., Schlozman, K.L., & Brady, H. E. (1955). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Harvard University Press
Von Platz, J. (2014). Are economic liberties basic rights?. Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 13(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1470594X13483466 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1470594X13483466
Wall, S. (2006). Rawls and the status of political liberty. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 87(2), 245–270. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0114.2006.00258.x DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0114.2006.00258.x
Walzer, M. (1967). The obligation to disobey. Ethics 77 (3): pp. 163-175 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/291630
Warren, M. (2001). Democracy and association. Princeton University Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400823925
White, S. (1997). Freedom of association and the right to exclude. Journal of Political
Philosophy, 5(4), 373–391. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9760.00039 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9760.00039
White, S. (1998). Trade unionism in a liberal state. In A. Gutmann (Ed.), Freedom of association (pp. 330–356). Princeton University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691219387-013
Young, I. M. (1992). Social groups in associative democracy. Politics & Society, 20(4), 529–534. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329292020004011 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329292020004011
