78 - Freedom

Summary

The concept of freedom (or liberty – he doesn’t distinguish the two) is central to Rawls’s theory of justice at a number of levels. On the first page of A Theory of Justice, anticipating the priority that he gives to his first principle of justice over his second, as well as his critique of utilitarianism, Rawls asserts that “justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others” (TJ 3). At the start of Political Liberalism, he orients his project by noting the apparent conlict between the ideals of freedom and equality (PL 4), and later he claims that “the point” of developing justice as fairness is to try to resolve this “impasse in our recent political history” (PL 300). He also notes the dispute concerning the proper understanding of liberty itself by pointing to the conlict

between the tradition associated with Locke, which gives greater weight to what Constant called ‘the liberties of the moderns,’ freedom of thought and conscience, certain basic rights of the person and of property, and the rule of law, and the tradition associated with Rousseau, which gives greater weight to what Constant called ‘the liberties of the ancients,’ the equal political liberties and the values of public life. (PL 4–5; cf. JF 2)