The Law of Peoples: With "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited"

by John Rawls

Book Overview

This book consists of two parts: "The Law of Peoples," a major reworking of a much shorter article by the same name published in 1993, and the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," first published in 1997. Taken together, they are the culmination of more than fifty years of reflection on liberalism and on some of the most pressing problems of our times by John Rawls.

"The Law of Peoples" extends the idea of a social contract to the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674005422
• ISBN13: 9780674005426
• Release Date: March 2001
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Another Interesting Rawls Work

This concise book consists of 2 essays, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited and The Law of Peoples. While The Idea... essay is second in the book, I would read it first because it is a good review of a crucial concept in Rawls' thought and very useful for grasping the argument in The Law of Peoples. The Idea... explicates Rawls emphasis on mutual justification and the somewhat separate nature of political conduct in formulating the basis of polities. Some of Rawls' last work, The Law of Peoples is an attempt to extend Rawls contractarian approach to international relations. Rawls uses the same approach here used in prior work proposing a reasonable basis for political organization of individual polities. In international relations, Rawls proposes a contract between Peoples (or their representatives) who meet on equal terms behind an analogue of his famous "veil of ignorance" to guarantee a free and equal status. This leads to rational (promotion of self interest) and reasonable (mutually and publicly justifiable) formulation of standards for international conduct. These include many standard tenets of international law such as war only for self-defense. Rawls includes both liberal societies (essentially all forms of functioning modern democracies) and what he terms decent peoples. The latter will not meet all the criteria for a liberal state but will respect human rights and have some measures for broad political participation. Something like the type of state envisioned by 18th century theorists like Montesquieu or a state with an state religion and tolerance of other faiths would be decent societies. Rawls basic point is that the values upheld by liberal or decent societies extend logically via the mechanisms he proposes to a reasonable ideal formulation of international relations. Rawls does propose this as an assembly of Peoples, rather than states. This distinction is not perfectly clear but may be that state for Rawls implied too much about the powers of the entity and may not satisfy the veil of ignorance criteria. After formulating and justifying his ideal theory, Rawls discuses some non-ideal issues, such as conduct of war and the obligations favored states have towards less fortunate states. Like much of Rawls work, this work is rigorously formulated and written very carefully. Rawls is never a sparking stylist but this work is perhaps more easily read than some of this work. Rawls feels this work is realistically utopian, the purpose of which is to define some of the bounds of what might be possible in international relations by systematic exercise of reason and good faith. In this case, this is actually realistic. Rawls is on firm ground in the sense that some of the foundations for developing his system, like the existence of democractic pluralistic societies and absence of war between democracies, are real phenomena.

Hope for our future.

My 'phenom' daughter recommended this book to me. She read it as a poli-sci/pre-med undergrad at UC Berkeley, and having noticed my growing cynicism regarding the direction our country has been headed, this was her 'philosophical lifesaver'. What Prof. Rawls offers is nothing less than a roadmap of hope, not only for our country but for the world. And that's a mouthful of praise, coming from a cynical Vietnam-vet.

Disparate peoples coming together

This is a must-read book. This treatise analyses how peoples of diverse cultures and religions can find a path towards living cooperatively together in peace. If the peoples of the world want to find a "government" that can lead them all and be respected, this book will be of enormous assistance in understanding the way it may be done. The discussion views a variety of disparate forms of societies and describes their pros and cons to underscore his arguments, and as a result Laws could easily be quoted out of context. This however is the strength of his discourse, as he takes the reader along in his line of thought, while at the same time answering his anticipated critics.

Extending the social contract even further

John Rawls believes that we can achieve something akin to a utopia. Although precious few utopian thinkers have escaped the disreputable taint of astonishing naiveté, Rawls has thought hard about the moral, religious, cultural, and historical nuances that so often make utopic claims tragically optimistic. His own vision of a realistic political utopia rests in his faith in the idea of a social contract; the essays collected in these volumes present Rawls' lifework as a consistent project of extending and radicalizing this venerable idea.Earlier Rawls articulated several general principles--for example, "justice as fairness," and "public reason"--that he thinks justify political relations between members of constitutional democracy. In this book he presents an even more general principle, "the law of peoples," that he thinks would extends the social contract to include members of certain illiberal societies. Readers interested in Rawls' latest views about the real-world prospects of his realistic utopia will welcome this short book. In addition to presenting a long essay about his most general political principle, that of the "law of peoples," this book also includes a shorter new essay on Rawls' influential conception of "public reason" within liberal democracy. In both, Rawls is very much concerned with showing how his lifelong project-to bring into fruitful synthesis our deepest communal insights about reasonableness and justice-justify his faith in a realistic utopia. Rawls' congenial prose style makes his dazzling vision accessible to all conscientious readers.

The Morality of Liberalism

John Rawls is indisputably the most honorable spokesman of political liberalism of the past twenty-five years. His theoretical committment to and devlopment of liberalism is an inspiring attempt to reconcile the difficulties inherent in a heterogenous society in which different conceptions of the good life and varied value systems, beliefs, and principles can coexist and yet affirm the political conception of a constitutional regime. How can a nation entreat its inhabitants to carve out their conception of the good life and their own value systems and yet achieve agreement on a set of principles that all citizens may abide by? It is the answer to this question that Rawls's works have sought to answer. The Law of Peoples is no less concerned with this question. Rawls's attempts to extend a social contractarian approach to human existence on the international level is thorough and nuanced. Liberal peoples, he argues, have three basic features. They possess a reasonably just constitutional democractic government that serves their fundamental interests; they are united by common sympathies; and above all, they have a morally mature nature. Critics who claim that Rawls's brand of liberalism invites a form of moral agnosticism had better think twice. Moral maturity and its genetic antecedent--human moral nature, are the preconditions that underly the moral basis of liberalism in general: deep respect for human beings and the necessity of treating them as ends in themselves. Rawls's development of a Just War Doctrine should force us to re-think traditional concepts of sovereignty and undermines the claims to legitimacy that outlaw states seek to impose on moral communities in the name of cultural authenticity. In this respect Rawls' work is indispensible to young liberal scholar's such as myself. In fact I have depended on his theoretical approach to ground much of my highly controversial and hotly contested book, "Becoming a Cosmopolitan: What It Means To be a Human Being in the New Millennium." I argue, however, for a more pugnacious form of liberalism by rejecting outright, as conceptions of the good, all forms of tribal (racial/ethnic and national)identities and argue for the obliteration of all cultural practices that undermine human rights. For those who believe that moral progress is possible and who wish to further advance the idea that liberal democracies represent a superior and more evolved form of social and political living, The Law of Peoples is a detailed and rigorous application of this idea.