120 - Liberalism, comprehensive vs. political

Summary

Comprehensive liberalism, for Rawls, refers to comprehensive doctrines with distinctly liberal content. Taking these two elements in turn, comprehensive doctrines are more or less complete worldviews, whether religious, philosophical, moral, or metaphysical. Comprehensive views include “conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of human character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that informs our conduct” – including “nonpolitical conduct” – “and in the limit … our life as a whole” (PL 13). And by liberal, Rawls is referring to a historical tradition of moral, political, and philosophical thought, whose constituent views share in some distinctive features of their understandings of morality, its psychology and epistemology, and associated ideals of government and politics. Historically, Rawls understands the liberal tradition to originate in the aftermath of the Reformation where the resulting religious pluralism and religious wars led to discussions of and struggles for tolerance and liberties of thought and conscience. This tradition extends up to the present day, through the revolutionary, constitutional, and democratic taming of monarchical authority by rising middle classes, and the extension of majority rule and suffrage eventually to working classes, women, and people of all ethnicities (LHPP 11; PL, xxii–xxx, xxxviii–xxxix,159; JF 1, 192–193; LHMM 5–7).