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John Rawls and the Common Good
Roberto Luppi
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The chapters in this book analyze the relationship between core concepts
of the common good and the work of American political philosopher
John Rawls.
One of the main criticisms that has been made of Rawls is his supposed
neglect of central aspects of collective life. The contributors to this
book explore the possibility of a substantive and community-oriented
interpretation of Rawls’s thought. The chapters investigate Rawls’s views
on values such as community, faith, fraternity, friendship, gender equality,
love, political liberty, reciprocity, respect, sense of justice, and virtue. They
demonstrate that Rawls fnds a balance between certain individualistic
aspects of his theory of justice and the value of community. In doing so,
the book ofers insightful new readings of Rawls.
John Rawls and the Common Good will be of interest to scholars and
advanced students working in political, moral, and legal philosophy.
Roberto Luppi is Research Fellow at Libera Università Maria Ss. Assunta,

Rome, Italy.
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John Rawls and the
Common Good
Edited by Roberto Luppi

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Luppi, Roberto, editor.
Title: John Rawls and the common good / Edited by Roberto Luppi.
Description: New York, NY : Taylor & Francis, 2022. | Series: Routledge
studies in contemporary philosophy | Includes bibliographical references
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Identifers: LCCN 2021038421 (print) | LCCN 2021038422 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367696665 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003143086 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Common good. | Rawls, John, 1921–2002—Politcal and
social views. | Political science—Philosophy.
Classifcation: LCC JC330.15 .J64 2022 (print) | LCC JC330.15 (ebook) |
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LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021038421
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ISBN: 978-0-367-69666-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-69751-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-14308-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003143086
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Contents
List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s Texts vii
John Rawls and the Common Good: An Introduction 1

R O B E RTO L UP P I
1 Community 14
D A N I E L A . DO MB RO WSKI
2 Faith and the Common Good in the Political Philosophy

of John Rawls 37
D AV I D A . R E IDY
3 Fraternity (and the Diference Principle) 59

M A R C O M A RTIN O
4 Friendship: A Familiar Value 76

R U TH A B B E Y
5 Gender Justice, Rawls, and the Common Good 96

E L I Z A B E TH E DE N B E RG
6 Love: The Vices of Love and Rawlsian Justice 122

PA U L V O I C E
7 Political Liberty 140

M . V I C TO R I A CO STA
8 Reciprocity and Justifcation in Political Liberalism:

Self-Application Vindicated 161
PA U L W E I TH MAN
vi Contents
9 Respect 181
J A M E S B O E TTCH E R
10 Sense of Justice 204

JON MANDLE
11 Virtue 226
R O B E RTO L UP P I
Notes on Contributors 249

Index 252
Abbreviations for Rawls’s Texts
The following are abbreviations for the works of John Rawls as they are
referred to in this book:
BIMSF A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, ed. T. Nagel
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
CP Collected Papers, ed. S. Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1999).
JF Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. E. Kelly (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
LHMP Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. B. Herman
LHPP Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, ed. S. Freeman
LP The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1999).
PL Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press,
paperback edition, 1996).
PRR “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” [1997] reprinted in CP,
573–616, and in LP, 129–180.
TJ A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, revised edition, 1999).
John Rawls and the Common
Good
An Introduction
Roberto Luppi
This book celebrates an important anniversary in contemporary phi-

losophy: 50 years have passed since the publication of one of the most
infuential works of the last century, A Theory of Justice by John Rawls
([1971] 1999a), a book that signaled a real watershed moment in its
feld of research, as a result of which “Political philosophers . . . must
either work within Rawls’ theory or explain why not,” as Robert Nozick
remarked (1974, 183). Rawls’s theorizing was the basis for the afrmation
of a particular vision of liberalism, one that was aimed at both protect-
ing individual freedoms and promoting the economic and social bases of
equality. This vision has been extremely infuential in the philosophical
refection of the last 50 years, on issues such as justice and reciprocity,
society and institutions, equality and freedom, generating discussions
among thinkers belonging to a broad range of theoretical convictions,
nationalities, and cultures.
As the title suggests, however, this book aims to celebrate the 50th
anniversary from a perspective, which has rarely been applied to the phi-
losopher’s thought, namely that of the “common good.” Since the 1980s,
in fact, one of the focal points of the debate surrounding Rawls’s work
has been the so-called communitarian critique of liberalism. Indeed, great
philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Michael Wal-
zer, and Charles Taylor have accused Rawls and liberalism more gener-
ally of relying on an individualistic and abstract vision of human beings
(or “unencumbered selves,” as Sandel writes), thus overlooking central
aspects of collective life related to the concepts of community, virtue, civic
friendship, solidarity, and so on.1 In short, one of the principal subjects
of said criticism was the Rawlsian ‘lack of interest’ in the concepts and
values that refer to the common good.2 This position is aptly summed up
by David Hollenbach:
the idea of the common good is in trouble. John Rawls speaks for
many observers in the West today when he says that the pluralism of
the contemporary landscape makes it impossible to envision a social
DOI: 10.4324/9781003143086-1
2 Roberto Luppi
good on which all can agree. This is the intellectual and theoretical
challenge to the common good today: diversity of visions of the good
life makes it difcult or even impossible to attain a shared vision of
the common good. Such a shared vision cannot survive as an intel-
lectual goal if all ideas of the good are acknowledged to be partial,
incomplete, and incompatible. This pluralism also makes it impossible
to achieve a strong form of social unity in practice without repression
or tyranny. This is the practical challenge: pursuit of a common good
as envisioned by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ignatius must be abandoned
as a practical social objective incompatible with modern freedoms.
(Hollenbach 2004, 9)
Although Rawls has often been the main subject of these communitarian
objections, they constitute a more general critique of liberalism. With
this term, we refer here to that philosophical doctrine, which initially
spread throughout Europe following the religious wars of the 16th and
17th centuries and tried to limit the power – and, at times, abuses – of
government (especially in the form of absolute monarchy), guaranteeing
citizens equal freedoms and rights, which gradually came to be recog-
nized as inviolable. At the root of this doctrine was the awareness that
people naturally tend to disagree on central issues of their existence,
starting from the idea of ‘the good life.’ Being reasonable has thus ceased
to be seen as a guarantee of unanimity, and it has been accepted that,
in matters of supreme importance, people are destined to disagree. By
virtue of this conviction, the decisive question for liberal theory has
thus shifted from the defnition of an idea of good, which a community
must pursue, to the development of just and fair terms of coexistence,
which are then accompanied by the adopting of diferent conceptions of
the good life by individuals (Larmore 1996, 121–123; Schwarzenbach
2009, 18–20).
As stated by a signifcant portion of the liberal tradition, consequently,
rather than to personal ends and interests, or the development of ideals
of human perfection in citizens, the state should turn its attention to
maintaining peace and order, the protection of rights and of individual
freedoms, and the promotion of material prosperity. In short, liberalism
has afrmed the need for state neutrality toward the worldviews of its
citizens. This is highlighted by Dworkin, among others:
It is a fundamental, almost defning, tenet of liberalism that the gov-

ernment of a political community should be tolerant of the diferent
and often antagonistic convictions its citizens have about the right
way to live: that it should be neutral, for example, between citizens
who insist that a good life is necessarily a religious one and other
citizens who fear religion as the only dangerous superstition.
(Dworkin 1995, 191)
John Rawls and the Common Good 3
State neutrality toward the diferent visions of good is believed – especially
by the critics of liberalism – to be coupled with the afrmation of indi-
vidualism (and self-interest) on the social level. They sum up the liberal
society in the image of an agreement between individuals characterized by
a plurality of goals and conceptions of good and who share little or noth-
ing except the common concern for self-preservation and the pursuit – or
safeguarding – of prosperity. Due to their accentuated individualism and
the exaltation of autonomy and independence at the expense of afliation
and collective action, these societies are accused of taking the form of a
summation of self-referential individual rights and interests, in which the
intervention of the community, and especially of the state, appears as
a continued interference in the free action of the individual – tolerated
almost exclusively in areas such as public order, in which the impossibility
of single persons to individually achieve the desired results is manifested.
The liberal state is thus charged with creating “isolated, monadic citizens
who care only about their own good, little about the welfare of their fel-
lows or their overall political community, and who generally lack the civic
virtues needed to sustain a viable liberal polity” (McCabe 1998, 558).
The inevitable result of this overall image – so the critics go on – is
thus the impossibility of the liberal state to stimulate the pursuit of the
common good. The latter must be considered the good of the community
as a whole, as a social body, and not as the mere sum of the goods of
individuals. It takes the form of a moral attitude, which consists of a set
of shared values concerning what we owe one another, as citizens who are
bound together in the same society, and reminds people of the importance
of interpersonal bonds, virtues, and collective action in view of personal
fourishing and societal welfare. The achievement of this kind of good is
thus seen by some as irreconcilable with the life of a liberal society. In this
regard, Galston writes:
Liberalism is said to undermine community, to restrict unduly oppor-

tunities for democratic participation, to create inegalitarian hierarchy,
and to reinforce egoistic social confict at the expense of the common
good. Community, democracy, equality, virtue – these constitute the
mantra of contemporary antiliberalism.
(Galston 1991, 42)
In contrast to what has been argued by many critics, this book attempts
to fnd some form of reconciliation between the liberal tradition and the
concept of the common good, preserving the great achievements of liber-
alism – such as the afrmation of freedom and rights, political and reli-
gious tolerance, and interpersonal respect – at the same time combining
them with the key values of the common good. Such an attempt will be
developed through the analysis of one of the greatest liberal thinkers of
the last century: John Rawls.
4 Roberto Luppi
Over the years, there have been attempts to demonstrate the presence
of common ground between Rawls and scholars working within a com-
munitarian perspective or, in any case, to highlight that the framework
created by the philosopher cannot do without concepts akin to those that
give substance to the defnition of the common good. With this book, we
do not want to return to the debate, which has animated the communitar-
ian critique of liberalism; this can now be considered long concluded. Nor
does this work aim to ofer an incontrovertible demonstration of the pos-
sibility of a communitarian interpretation of Rawlsian theory. Fifty years
after the frst publication of A Theory of Justice, however, an exhaustive
and general analysis of the relationship between Rawlsian thought and
the crucial values, which are constitutive of the idea of the common good,
is still needed: this is precisely the purpose of this book.
It is Rawls himself who, in A Theory of Justice, emphasizes that he
aspires to fnd a balance between certain individualistic aspects of his
theory of justice and the value of the community, deeply connected with
the “social nature of mankind” (TJ, 458):
justice as fairness has a central place for the value of community, and
how this comes about depends upon the Kantian interpretation. I
discuss this topic in Part Three. The essential idea is that we want to
account for the social values, for the intrinsic good of institutional,
community, and associative activities, by a conception of justice that
in its theoretical basis is individualistic. . . . From this conception,
however individualistic it might seem, we must eventually explain the
value of community. Otherwise the theory of justice cannot succeed.
(TJ, 233–234, emphasis added)
The idea underlying this book is that Rawls (at least in part) succeeds in
his attempt, and the demonstration of this is ofered by a groundbreak-
ing examination of the values that most distance the philosopher’s work
from a purely procedural reading, thus seeking elements of dialogue and
intersection between the concept of the common good and his philosophi-
cal system.
I. Rawls and the Common Good

A fundamental feature of the common good is that it is internal to the
requirements of a social relationship (Hussain 2018). In every community,
it must be understood as the culmination of a model of practical reason-
ing, which fosters the establishing of a political and social relationship
among citizens, aimed at attending to the central afairs of their coex-
istence. However, one of the fundamental aspects of this idea lies in its
difcult – perhaps impossible? – defnition. It is one and multiple, and its
edges are always blurred; at times, it is almost a feeling, destined to remain
in the form of an inspiring ideal of collective action, but never entirely
discernible or achievable in full. As Sluga writes:
we can envisage the common good in very diferent ways, as high and
as low, as wide and as narrow. We can speak of this common good in
the language of justice, of freedom, security, order, morality, happi-
ness, individual well-being, prosperity, progress, and what have you.
We can, moreover, envisage the community for which such a good is
sought in diferent ways: as tribal, local, national, international, or
even global, as egalitarian or hierarchical in its order, as traditional
or freely constituted, as unifed or divided. And we can fnally also
envisage the search itself in various ways: as organized or spontane-
ous, as guided or as cooperative, as deliberate or merely implicit, as
successful or thwarted.
(Sluga 2014, 2)
In the history of political thought, its manifold nature has made it possible
to trace the common good in a plurality of theories. From ancient Greece
to Christian thought, the common good has often been interpreted as
the testing ground against which not only the formal legitimacy but also
the intrinsic goodness of any form of government is measured. The com-
mon good has thus been observed as a category that is both ethical and
political – spheres that are seen as intertwined (Campanini 2014, 16–17).
It is precisely this last connection that the political culture of modernity
has tended to reject, focusing the overall evaluation of state power more
on legitimacy than on value judgments. Inevitably, this development has
contributed to the gradual loss of centrality of the concept of the common
good in political and philosophical refection.
However, in the second half of the 20th century, this concept was
gradually rediscovered through the work of scholars interested in both
the Christian tradition and classical philosophy. Hand in hand with this
rediscovery, important disaccords with large sectors of the liberal tradi-
tion have nevertheless surfaced, preventing the revival of the common
good as a basic element of contemporary philosophy. As outlined earlier,
one of the distinctive features of liberalism is in fact the recognition of
ethical, religious, and philosophical pluralism as a central and irrepress-
ible, or rather welcome, trait of today’s societies. Related to this is the
spreading of both religious and political tolerance as a crucial element in
order to allow peaceful coexistence and cooperation within plural com-
munities. A signifcant portion of the liberal tradition has often considered
these two very elements, pluralism and the related practice of tolerance,
as difcult to reconcile with the idea of the common good, which instead
is believed to rely on a solid social bond, which can only be ensured by
the sharing of the same idea of good within community (Downing and
Thigpen 1993, 1050).
6 Roberto Luppi
The fracture that has emerged between ethics and politics must there-
fore be looked upon as one of the principal reasons for the ‘crisis’ of
the concept of the common good and its subsequent relegation to the
background, in the context of liberal philosophical contemporaneity.
However, it is possible to imagine the rediscovery of this concept based
on the idea of morality, rather than that of ethics. Here, morality is
understood as that sphere, which includes citizens’ collective and public
life, the sphere that is connected to their system of cooperation and its
rules, practices, and virtues. If, given today’s pluralism, it is impossible
to fnd a common good, which comprehensively absorbs the lives of
citizens, related to their idea of the good life, we can trace it in what is
authentically common to the whole community: indeed, its morality.
This is the idea John Rawls refers to in his interview for Commonweal
in 1998. When asked about the presence of an idea of the common good
in his theory, he replied:
You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I
think that’s a mistake. For example, you might say that, if citizens are
acting for the right reasons in a constitutional regime, then regardless
of their comprehensive doctrines they want every other citizen to have
justice. So you might say they’re all working together to do one thing,
namely to make sure every citizen has justice. Now that’s not the only
interest they all have, but it’s the single thing they’re all trying to do.
In my language, they’re striving toward one single end, the end of
justice for all citizens.
(CP, 622)
What emerges is the conviction that a liberal state, while active in preserv-
ing the neutrality among the various conceptions of the good, is able to
ofer its citizens a fundamental end in relation to which they can act col-
lectively: it is the “mutual good of mutual justice” (Rawls 1988, 274). The
Rawlsian idea of the common good is therefore characterized by interests
that the members of a community can publicly welcome and intrinsi-
cally value by virtue of their status as citizens, committed to respecting
the principles of public morality. This status takes precedence over other
statuses and afliations that characterize the identity of the individual as
a private person. Citizens are thus deemed to have a relational obligation
to mutually take care of the interests connected to the “position of equal
citizenship,” shared by everyone (TJ, 82–83, 217). These interests concern
the respect for and protection of the principles of justice and the institu-
tions that are inspired by them. The status of equal citizenship and its
mutual recognition are crucial, above all, in order to highlight what unites
all members of the community, partially setting aside diferences and divi-
sions and preventing – as far as possible – the rise of social envy and
erroneous competition among individuals and groups (Hussain 2018).
In essence, a conception of social life is put forward by Rawls, by virtue
of which everyone has a fundamental interest in ensuring that certain
basic social conditions prevail. The discussion, deliberation, and action of
citizens with a view to the common good allow them to afrm a principle
of reciprocity (and civic friendship) that leads everyone to give and receive
justice and mutual consideration. Thus, while not (necessarily) adopting
supererogatory attitudes, each individual plays their part in a collective
dynamic in view of the interests of their associates, as these interests are
common to all. Moreover, this kind of society ofers everyone the possibil-
ity to realize their personal conception of the good, in the form of their
life plans. These goods should not be seen as exclusively private but often
shared within the multiple associations that make up the social body.
In this plurality of life experiences, citizens feel pleasure and pride and
“realize their common or matching nature,” which in turn is inevitably
part of the common good of the Rawlsian community (TJ, 459; cf. Keys
2006, 35).
In this book, we will see how referring to justice as the basic frame-
work for the common good opens the door to other values and concepts,
which, although connected to justice itself, have much more substantive
features than those acknowledged by the critics of John Rawls. Contrary
to the idea that he understands justice as “a rather limited good; [as] the
good of a cold, modern, and essentially heartless world in which the issue
between us is only what you owe me and what I owe you,” the book will
explore the far from marginal role that concepts, such as for example
that of virtue, friendship, faith, or fraternity, play in the theory of justice
of the philosopher. In line with this perspective, readers will thus judge
for themselves whether the Rawlsian theory actually provides a “particu-
lar, distinctively narrow, and essentially Protestant view of the common
good” or not (Sluga 2014, 3–4).
Here, however, it is important to dwell – albeit briefy – on another
point, that is to say on whether the vision set out in this work is truly
able to speak to today’s society, a society that since 1971 has undergone
tremendous changes: technological revolution and globalized capitalism,
surveillance and interdependence, digital democracy and populisms, new
inequalities and balances of power, migration and climate change are just
some of the crucial features of today’s global village, which now takes
on a very diferent appearance from that of John Rawls’s time. Yet the
idea from which this collective work springs forth is that the philoso-
pher’s thought continues to speak to us and to ofer important insights on
debates so crucial to the history of humanity that they are likely destined
to endure forevermore, such as those on justice and freedom, equality,
and the common good. It is precisely on this last concept that doubts,
questions, and criticism will likely focus: does it still make sense to talk
about the common good in a globalized world like today’s, in which its
traditional frames of reference (family, city, and state) seem to gradually
8 Roberto Luppi
lose importance? And if so, is it not necessary to embrace a universal
perspective on the common good, given the growing interdependence
between the various areas of the world and the peoples who inhabit them?
At the same time, however, does such a universal perspective not render
this concept meaningless?
On the one hand, what arises is the thought that a common good
referred only to the polis, as in the ancient world, or to the nation, as
in the modern world, no longer makes sense in the era of globalization
and with the arising of problems, which require a global vision. Environ-
mental issues and COVID-19 represent only two, albeit very relevant,
examples in this regard. On the other hand, however, it is possible to
put forward the opinion that the global broadening of the concept of the
common good leads to such a ‘softening’ of its contents, as to render them
devoid of meaning and power of infuence.
This book does not take a stand on the possibility of rethinking the
concept of the common good from a global perspective or otherwise. This
approach is not taken into consideration here for (at least) two reasons:
one, linked to the philosopher at the center of the analysis; another of a
more general nature. In fact, adopting an approach that cost him greatly
in terms of criticism, Rawls devoted his refection predominantly to the
state as a single entity, going in search of a political conception of justice
that was applicable within a constitutional democracy seen as an island,
separate and independent from any surrounding realities. Only later, in The
Law of Peoples, did he move on to consider issues of international politics,
which ultimately occupied a rather marginal space in the general structure
of his thought. This leads to the adoption of a more traditional perspec-
tive on the common good here, addressing the community – at most, on a
national scale – but certainly not humanity as a whole. Second, at a time in
which the implementation of a policy aimed at the common good appears
so necessary and yet, concurrently, so distant, it might be advisable – even
from a theoretical point of view – to focus on the state level rather than on
a macro reality, such as a global one. Although this is an approach that will
not please some, the essential idea is that, when a house is in disarray, as our
beloved humanity in many ways is, to put things in order one must frst con-
centrate on the single rooms and then, only subsequently, should one focus
on the whole. It is already difcult to reconcile the ‘good’ of a local reality
with that of the state, given recurring tensions and conficts, be they appar-
ent or hidden. Even more complex issues arise when the criterion of the
common good is transferred to the level of political, economic, and social
choices to be adopted on the world level. Nevertheless, as the example of
the house brings to light, they are not conficting or incompatible types of
good: in order to be sustainable, in fact, the common good of a country
must not be thought of in contrast with that of other state entities, near
or far from it. Rather, the two types of common good are complementary
and – in some ways – follow on from one another.
II. Chapter Outlines
In short, is it possible to trace an idea of the common good in John
Rawls’s thought? This work concludes that it is. Although he uses this
term with absolute parsimony, my opinion – and I venture to say also
that of the other contributors – is that Rawls has outlined a specifc
idea of the common good for his well-ordered society. A common
good that is inextricably linked to the idea of justice, but which must
not be understood as something ‘monolithic’ and ‘well-circumscribed’
or ‘circumscribable.’ I rather like to think of it as a mosaic, never
defned in its entirety and made of multiform pieces: some larger and
well-polished, others smaller or faded in color; all, however, equally
fundamental in order to build the greater, overall image depicting the
Rawlsian idea of the common good. What the contributors of this
book do is just that: put the pieces of this mosaic under their micro-
scope, observing and analyzing them in detail and, at times, turning
them upside down.
Therefore, in this book, the goal is not to focus on the Rawlsian defni-
tion of the common good as such, nor to defnitively judge whether it is
feasible or not. The belief is that an approach of this kind would lead to an
overall image that is always lacking in some parts, due to the multifaceted
nature of this notion. The approach is rather to concentrate on a multi-
plicity of concepts, all intimately linked to the category of the common
good, in the hope that from this multiplicity the reader will be able to
extrapolate its uniqueness, that is, what unites these elements and allows
them to ensure the substance and multiform vitality that are essential if
the concept of the common good wants to make its contribution within
the community it addresses.
In Chapter 1, Daniel A. Dombrowski devotes himself to the analysis
of the concept of community in Rawlsian theory. To be exact, the chap-
ter contains a defense of Rawlsian, political communitarianism, which is
seen as a moderate stance between the weak communitarianism found in
Hobbes and related thinkers, and the strong communitarianism found
in Aristotle and the many thinkers infuenced by him. Thus, the charac-
teristics of the Rawlsian political community are highlighted, wherein
there is widespread acceptance by the population of a certain conception
of justice (contra Hobbesian views), but where there is not widespread
acceptance of any view of the good or of any particular comprehensive
doctrine (contra Aristotelian views).
In Chapter 2 on faith and the common good, David A. Reidy sets out
the “fdeism” to which Rawls claims to have been committed through-
out his adult life. Taking into account the important diferences between
A Theory of Justice, Political Liberalism, and The Law of Peoples, the
author shows how this fdeism relates in each case to the common good
at which Rawls believed free equals properly aimed in political and
10 Roberto Luppi
law-making activity, suggesting that in his philosophical work Rawls was,
among other things, “turning inside out” his fdeism.
In Chapter 3, Marco Martino deals with fraternity. In A Theory of
Justice, Rawls associates his diference principle with the concept of fra-
ternity, drawing attention to the revolutionary tripartite motto of 1789,
“liberty, equality, fraternity.” Through the diference principle, Rawls
attempts to think rationally about fraternity, seeing it as something intrin-
sic to political processes, rather than external to them. Martino traces the
evolution of this reasoning: in his investigation, the crucial features of the
‘indirect’ treatment of the principle of fraternity developed by Rawls are
brought to light, even if ultimately it is concluded that the philosopher
does not provide fraternity with an adequate theoretical foundation.
In Chapter 4, Ruth Abbey examines what Rawls says in A Theory of
Justice about friendship as an interpersonal relationship. In particular,
she underlines the key points in TJ in which friendship plays a crucial
role: as one of society’s smaller associations or social unions, as a human
good, and – to be exact – as the clearest of Rawls’s examples of a comple-
mentary good, as a central aspect in the morality of association stage of
moral development, and in his discussion of guilt and shame. Further-
more, Abbey shows that a focus on friendship brings some important
Aristotelian features of the philosopher’s thinking to light.
In Chapter 5, Elizabeth Edenberg deals with the question of whether
Rawls’s theory of justice is capable of secure justice for women and how
this relates to the common good. In particular, Edenberg points out how
many injustices rooted in the gender structure of society were justifed by
appealing to the common good. Yet to properly account for how a just
society can meet the needs of the common good, surely the common good
should be good for all members of that society, rather than relying on sub-
ordinating some to allow for the fourishing of others. Edenberg under-
lines how by Rawls’s own measures of justice that rely on the acceptability
of principles of justice to people understood as free and equal, a sexist
society or any society that seeks the common good through the exploita-
tion or subordination of some groups to others would not pass Rawls’s
own hypothetical acceptability test. Nevertheless, Rawls’s own discussion
of gender justice has been the subject of extensive feminist critique: both
Rawls’s discussions of gender justice and the critical responses to them
are the subject of the chapter.
In Chapter 6, Paul Voice goes through the analysis of the concept of
love in Rawlsian theory. Since Rawls wants to leave room for citizens
to love for reasons and in ways that align with their idea of the good,
Voice outlines that love relationships are only partially constrained by
the philosopher’s two principles of justice. From this observation, the
author argues that the partial constraints on love, which Rawls’s theory
of justice imposes, are insufcient, resulting in systematic injustices that
ought to be corrected. However, Voice also claims that love and justice
can be aligned and reconciled both with Rawls’s principles of justice and
with his own notion of love. To this end, the author advances a notion of
proper or just love.
In Chapter 7, M. Victoria Costa examines the role of the political liber-
ties in Rawls’s theory of justice and discusses how they ought to be distrib-
uted to promote justice and the common good. Her chapter acknowledges
that one way to defend the equal distribution of the political liberties
appeals to their contribution to self-respect. But, since Rawls holds that
the fair value of the political liberties ought to be guaranteed, as well
as the equal distribution thereof, Costa argues that it is a concern with
preventing political domination that best explains the measures required
to guarantee their fair value. The twin requirements of equal distribution
and fair value are seen to contribute to the common good by operating
at the institutional level. But these requirements, Costa highlights, can be
supplemented by a principle: the principle of the common good, guiding
the ways in which citizens interact with each other when they make use
of their political liberties.
In Chapter 8, Paul Weithman deals with the concepts of “reciprocity”
and “justifcation” in Political Liberalism. Liberalism requires that politi-
cal arrangements be justifable to those who are subject to them. Some
critics argue that any view committed to this Justifability Condition is
caught in a dilemma, which arises when we ask whether the condition
applies to itself. The author argues that Rawlsian political liberalism
avoids the dilemma that self-application is thought to imply. The aim
of Rawlsian political liberalism is to identify principles citizens have to
honor to relate to one another as free equals. Weithman’s answer shows
that Rawlsian political liberalism is the most defensible form of liberalism
because of its commitment to a form of reciprocity that is needed for our
politics.
In Chapter 9, Boettcher focuses his analysis on the concept of respect,
in reference to the Rawlsian idea of public reason. According to the latter,
government ofcials and even ordinary citizens should decide fundamen-
tal matters of law and policy on the basis of reasons that are in principle
acceptable to others in light of some reasonable political conception of
justice along with other publicly accessible standards of evaluation. One
requirement of public reason is restraint, that is, the willingness to refrain
from supporting such laws and policies solely on the basis of nonpublic
reason. Boettcher revisits Rawls’s remarks on respect and self-respect and
argues that the restraint requirement is based primarily on an underlying
duty of mutual respect. However, the author outlines how an ideal of
civic friendship plays an important complementary but secondary role in
grounding the main requirements of public reason.
In Chapter 10, Jon Mandle describes two basic roles played by the
idea of a sense of justice in Rawls’s theory. On the one hand, he exam-
ines Rawls’s characterization of justice as fairness itself as an attempt to
12 Roberto Luppi
describe our sense of justice in refective equilibrium. On the other hand,
Mandle analyzes TJ’s account of the psychological development of a sense
of justice in individuals, which is part of Rawls’s argument for the stabil-
ity of a well-ordered society – the other component being his argument
for the congruence of the right and the good. Mandle highlights that
understanding how the moral psychology described by Rawls sets the
stage for the congruence argument helps to clarify the nature of refective
equilibrium and the Rawlsian vision of moral justifcation.
Chapter 11 analyzes the role of cooperative virtues in Rawlsian thought
and, in particular, ofers a reading of the twofold value they have within
his framework: they are seen to have an intrinsic value in the life of his
citizens and, at the same time, an instrumental one from the point of
view of society. The intrinsic value of cooperative virtues concerns the
fact that, without their acquisition, the individual does not become a
moral person, that is, a fully cooperative member of society. However,
cooperative virtues also play an essential role from an instrumental point
of view: their presence in citizens constitutes in fact the condicio sine qua
non for a well-ordered society to be able to frst establish itself and then
remain stable over time.
Notes
1. This accusation has been accompanied by the criticism against the preponder-
ant role assigned by Rawlsian theory to procedural aspects in the attempt to
maintain a position of neutrality toward the diferent worldviews competing
on the social stage. Liberalism has thus been accused of indiference toward the
multiple conceptions aimed at the fourishing of the human being, the so-called
privatization of good (MacIntyre 1990). It is important to underline that the
communitarian criticisms have especially turned to the early works of Rawls,
pertaining to the period of his philosophical theorizing before the publication
of Political Liberalism (1993). At the same time, it is also useful to mention
that, with the ascription as “communitarian,” some notable philosophers of
this group such as Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Sandel
have not always been ‘satisfed.’
2. The book does not analyze the communitarian objections in detail, nor does
it aspire to examine whether they are well founded or not. On this topic, see
Buchanan (1989), Gutmann (1985), and Mulhall and Swift (2003).
References
Buchanan, A. 1989. “Assessing the Communitarian Critique of Liberalism.” Eth-
ics 99(4): 852–882.
Campanini, G. 2014. Bene comune. Declino e riscoperta di un concetto. Bologna:
EDB.
Downing, L. and R. Thigpen. 1993. “Virtue and the Common Good in Liberal
Theory.” The Journal of Politics 55(4): 1046–1059.
Dworkin, R. 1995. “Foundations of Liberal Equality.” In S.L. Darwall (ed),
Equal Freedom. Selected Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 190–306. Ann
Arbor: Michigan University Press.
Galston, W. 1991. Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues and Diversity in the Liberal
State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gutmann, A. 1985. “Communitarian Critics of Liberalism.” Philosophy & Pub-
lic Afairs 14(3): 308–322.
Hollenbach, D. 2004. The Common Good and Christian Ethics. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Hussain, W. 2018. “The Common Good.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
At https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/common-good/ (accessed
Mai 2021).
Keys, M. 2006. Aquinas, Aristotle, and the Promise of the Common Good. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Larmore, C. 1996. The Morals of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
MacIntyre, A. 1990. “The Privatization of Good: An Inaugural Lecture.” The
Review of Politics 52(3): 344–361.
McCabe, D. 1998. “Private Lives and Public Virtues: The Idea of a Liberal Com-
munity.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 28(4): 557–585.
Mulhall, S. and A. Swift. 2003. Liberals and Communitarians. Malden, MA:
Wiley Blackwell.
Nozick, R. 1974. Anarchy State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books.
Rawls, J. 1988. “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good.” Philosophy &
Public Afairs 17(4): 251–276.
Rawls, J. (1971) 1999a. A Theory of Justice (TJ). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press.
Rawls, J. 1999b. Collected Papers (CP), ed. S. Freeman. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press.
Schwarzenbach, S.A. 2009. On Civic Friendship. Including Women in the State.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Sluga, H. 2014. Politics and the Search for the Common Good. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
1 Community
Daniel A. Dombrowski
Introduction
Perhaps the safest characterization of John Rawls’s view of community (or
social union) is that his stance is a moderate one between two extremes.
At one extreme is a weak sense of community found in Hobbesian stances
wherein there is a modus vivendi established between contesting parties
that do not share a sense of justice. This is merely an expedient truce
that is meant to halt hostilities among the contesting parties, hence it is
an inadequate basis for stability over time in that if one of the contesting
parties got the upper hand, the truce could be broken and the party with
the greatest threat advantage could, in efect, ram its views down the
throats of everyone else. At the other extreme are Aristotelian stances
that prescribe a unity constituted by widespread acceptance of a particu-
lar conception of the good life or of what Rawls calls a comprehensive
doctrine. These views can be called weak and strong communitarianism,
respectively (see Nickel 1990).
The moderate stance found in Rawls is that of a political community
wherein there is widespread acceptance by the population of a certain
conception of justice (contra Hobbesian views), but where there is not
widespread acceptance of any particular view of the good or of any par-
ticular comprehensive doctrine (contra Aristotelian views). This political
community in PL comes about through an overlapping consensus regard-
ing justice among people who afrm (very often uncompromisingly)
diferent conceptions of the good. This means that Rawlsian political
community may very well be afrmed by people for somewhat diferent
reasons. But Rawlsian community is indeed afrmed for moral reasons in
contrast to the reasons of expediency that characterize Hobbesian views.
One consequence of this Rawlsian view is that Aristotelian or strong
communitarianism (often in popular discourse referred to simply as com-
munitarianism), which has a state-endorsed conception of the good life,
should be abandoned in a condition of pervasive pluralism regarding the
comprehensive doctrines that citizens afrm. Comprehensive doctrines
apply to many topics other than political justice. Rawls is happy to afrm
DOI: 10.4324/9781003143086-2
Community 15
a consensus regarding the latter only, given the wide array of compre-
hensive doctrines: utilitarianism, various types of perfectionism, various
(and sometimes contentious) religious conceptions of the good, Marxism,
hedonism, etc. The hope is that we could attain a political community that
could accommodate diversity by removing many difcult philosophical/
religious issues from the political agenda.
The task of political philosophy in such a community is to analyze and
give a coherent linguistic formulation to popular culture in constitutional
democracy. In periods of turmoil political philosophy may be highlighted
more than when there is a stable concept of justice at work in political
institutions and in popular culture, when the work of politicians, jour-
nalists, and others comes to the fore. One is reminded here of Thomas
Kuhn’s famous distinction between revolutionary and normal science (see
Kuhn 1970). The important thing is that toleration on the ground be
widespread and a matter of intuitive conviction on the part of citizens,
given the fact of pervasive pluralism. That is, one need not have general
agreement about the good life in order to have political community and
agreement about justice.
The thesis of the present chapter is that the aforementioned moderate
Rawlsian view of community is worthy of explication and defense. This
explication and defense will occur over several stages in that I will frst
deal with the topic of individuation through community in Rawls and
then move to the complementarity among citizens that characterizes a
just society. The communal virtues in Rawls will be considered along with
the importance of the diference principle for the concept of community.
Contemporary critics like David Hollenbach, Louis Dupre, and Michael
Walzer will be considered, as well as historical thinkers who are often
assumed to ofer resistance to Rawlsian views, like Aristotle and Thomas
Aquinas. We will see that justice as fairness is by no means opposed to the
importance of community in Rawls; nor is the concept of goodness. The
chapter ends with a consideration of the relationship between communal
love/benevolence and Rawlsian justice.
I. Individuation Through Community

There is a communitarian strand to Rawls’s theory of justice due to the
fact that the very constitution of the individuals who are sometimes pit-
ted against the concept of community requires cooperation and a sense
of mutuality and reciprocity. Members of the Rawlsian community as a
result must share in the distribution of benefts as stipulated in his famous
two (actually, three) principles of justice. Far from endorsing the “unen-
cumbered self” so often ascribed to his theory (especially by Michael
Sandel), Rawls emphasizes the individual’s membership in a family and
various associations that form the individual’s character, for good or for
ill. It comes as a surprise to some readers that Rawls thinks of the social
16 Daniel A. Dombrowski
basis of self-respect as the most important primary good. A person’s
endeavors need to be at least implicitly appreciated by others in a shared
community of interests in order to confrm such self-respect. Self-respect
involves not merely (and not primarily) one’s own norms, but also (and
primarily) the norms that are anchored in familial or communal bodies
(see Alejandro 1993).
It is a mistake to depict the famous liberalism-communitarianism
debate as a confict between an individual’s judgment and society. This is
because the ends an individual chooses are already intertwined with oth-
ers’ approval. Perhaps an Emersonian self would be willing to stand up for
its moral independence regardless of what a community of shared inter-
ests might think, but this is not the Rawlsian view (see Emerson 1885). It
is true that Rawls defends vigorously political autonomy, but not a com-
prehensive autonomy that is destructive of associative ties. A community
of shared interests provides standards of worthiness that are crucial to the
primary good of self-esteem. It is membership in a community of shared
interests that fosters self-esteem, not the other way around (Alejandro
1993, 81). That is, the issue of whether the self is prior to its ends or vice
versa involves a blurred distinction. A developed sense of justice requires
the presence of (familial and associative) others (TJ, 462–479). In this
regard we should not exaggerate the alleged diference between supposed
Rawlsian (“Western”) individualism and the communitarian self that is
found, say, in various African cultures (see Nnodim 2020).
Before individuals choose the sort of persons they want to be, they have
already been shaped by communal values. In this regard even the Rawls
of TJ had anticipated Sandel’s critique. We are historical individuals who
are parts of some social tradition such that only in social union is an
individual complete (TJ, 525). Community is not a mere attribute of an
individual but is partially constitutive of the process of individuation. If
the social basis of self-respect is secured, it is more likely that citizens will
engage in genuine mutuality and be willing to reciprocate with others in
a system of mutual beneft. In turn, such willingness makes it more likely
that society can be organized in such a way that the demands of the two
(really three) principles of justice will actually be met.
Given what has been said thus far, a sketch of Rawlsian responses to
strong communitarian critiques can be seen. Sandel seems to miss alto-
gether Rawls’s moderate communitarianism largely because it is not the
strong sort that Sandel himself defends (see Sandel 1998). That is, San-
del assumes a defnition of “community” that is too restrictive. Alasdair
MacIntyre worries that without strong communitarianism Rawlsian jus-
tice cannot be sustained, in which case there is not much hope for contem-
porary democracies, given the fact that there are competing concepts of the
good and comprehensive doctrines that citizens afrm, but democracies
do thrive in the contemporary world, even when threatened by autocrats
like Donald Trump. This continued success of liberal democracy should
Community 17
call into question the assumption that strong communitarianism is a nec-
essary condition for democracy to fourish (see MacIntyre 1984). And
Charles Taylor contends that liberalism itself is a conception of the good,
thus implying that Rawlsian justice itself is a comprehensive doctrine (see
Weinstock 2015; Taylor 1989). But the qualities stipulated of the parties
in the Rawlsian original position are not intended as clues regarding a
comprehensive view of human nature any more than the need for political
autonomy is an implicit way of sneaking in comprehensive autonomy.
Rawls is doing something very specifc in his political philosophy and is
not trying to replace the wider aims of comprehensive doctrines, which
are tolerated in a condition of reasonable pluralism.
II. Complementarity
Thus far I have tried to call attention to two points (in reverse order): (a) a
citizen’s sense of justice and concept of the good presuppose habituation
into some communal values at the familial and associational levels and
(b) due to the pervasive pluralism of concepts of the good and compre-
hensive doctrines in contemporary societies, strong communitarianism
can hold sway at the societal level only through the illegitimate use of
force. Nonetheless there can be a political community based on a com-
mon view of justice, rather than a common view of the good. Rawlsian
communitarian justice can more accurately be described as a (just) social
union of (particular communal) social unions (TJ, 527, 529; PL, 201,
304, 323). Any social union, including that found in the original position,
involves complementarity, which Rawls analogizes to the musical play-
ers in a symphony orchestra (TJ, 524; PL, 321). Each player could have
learned to play well every instrument in the orchestra, but each becomes
profcient on a single instrument due to the difculty involved in learning
them all. The word “symphony” itself literally means to sound together,
to harmonize together, despite individual diferences among the players.
The orchestra metaphor evokes the democratic harmonic resolution of
any tension between individual and society. Behind the veil of ignorance,
as it were, each participant could theoretically play any instrument, but
in reality each has to rely on the other players to complement individual
insufciencies. When the veil – on this metaphor, a curtain – lifts, we can
play together in an aesthetically pleasing way (see Love 2003).
As is well known, over time Rawls became somewhat dissatisfed with
the shape his theory of justice had originally taken. The principles of
justice in TJ were seen as parts of an overarching moral theory. A soci-
ety based on them would be stable because all reasonable and rational
people would agree with them. Rawls came to see that a better concept
of stability was needed, which led in PL to the idea of overlapping con-
sensus. We have seen that this idea operates even in a condition of plural-
ism with respect to comprehensive doctrines yet nonetheless provides a
greater sense of community than the weak sort found in a modus vivendi.
Overlapping consensus is admittedly not deep, but this is a commend-
able feature in that overlapping consensus is, as a result of its not being
deep but wide, conducive to widespread agreement regarding justice in a
democratic society.
Establishing terms for social cooperation for mutual beneft remains
Rawls’s primary concern, but the principles of justice are now seen more
accurately in PL as political, rather than as comprehensive. These princi-
ples function as modules that can be inserted into various comprehensive
doctrines with their deeper communal ties. Even if citizens disagree stren-
uously regarding some particular issue or piece of legislation, they may
nonetheless be committed members to political community in that the
community in question centers on the basic framework of a just society
and on institutional essentials, rather than on various concrete particulars.
Stability for the right reasons requires that commitment to this framework
not be a mere compromise, but a matter of principled conviction so as
to secure political community and the complementarity involved in such
community (see Martin 2015; Riker 2015).
III. Communal Virtues

In addition to the criticism of Rawls not being sufciently committed
to community, it is also common to hear that he did not pay sufcient
attention to the virtues. However, it is important to note the distinction
between two sorts of virtues: political virtues and those linked to the
relatively non-political lives of citizens with their separate comprehensive
doctrines. Rawls is especially interested in the political virtues: toleration
of reasonable diferences, civility, a sense of fairness, and reasonableness
itself. Further, as we have seen, Rawls notes the importance of the virtues
connected with the socialization process of citizens in families and asso-
ciations (including neighborhoods and sports teams and churches). That
is, socialization into a virtuous life of some sort may be needed in order to
eventually have mature citizens capable of the political virtues. But a just
society cannot expect all citizens to develop those virtues that are idiosyn-
cratic to some comprehensive doctrines but not others, as in theological
virtues found in some religions but not others and certainly not in the lives
of religious skeptics. Faith is a prime example here. In diferent terms, the
common good of common goods that characterizes a just society requires
the political virtues that are essential parts of the societal common good,
in general, but only permits those found in the more specifc common
goods at the associational level of difering comprehensive doctrines (see
Downing and Thigpen 1993; Macedo 1990).
In a limited sense, liberal neutrality extends to both communities
and virtues, although a just state is not neutral regarding the need for
political virtues nor regarding the need to develop cooperative virtues
Community 19
within familial and associational life, a development that, like capital, can
accumulate over time (PL, 157). One thinks here of the way that both
churches and youth sport teams inculcate the virtues of respect for oth-
ers, sportspersonship, and team cooperation. It would be a gross error to
think that Rawls privatizes virtue in that “the personal” is by no means
synonymous with “the private,” as we will see. Indeed, well-ordered soci-
eties depend on the existence of citizens who have developed the commu-
nal virtues, both the cooperative virtues developed within the context of
one’s familial/associational life as well as the political virtues per se (see
Costa 2004; Galston 1991).
IV. The Diference Principle

Rawlsian political community consists in a social union of social unions.
This idea, when tethered to the famous diference principle, gives rise to
questions regarding how the Rawlsian view will bring about and/or sus-
tain community when principles of justice are, in turn, tethered to some
economic system or other. A social union of social unions is meant to
defect the charge that Rawls cannot account for the value of community,
but Rawls is acutely aware of the fact that our communal or social nature
can be easily trivialized (TJ, 456–459). After all, even egoists cannot learn
to speak or even to develop their own egoistic concerns outside of specifc
communities. Genuine human sociability, on Rawls’s view, requires the
diference principle rather than the “privatized” society that fnds its natu-
ral habitat in theories that are enthusiastic about competitive markets.
Rawls, by contrast, argues for a complementary good for all. He ofers
various mechanisms meant to hold in check instrumental market rela-
tions that get in the way of political community, especially the diference
principle and the public funding of elections so as to combat the curse
of money (TJ, 226, 275, 302; PL, lviii–lvix, 235, 328, 357–360; PRR,
772–773; LP, 24, 50, 115; also Schwarzenbach 2015).
However, we will see that Rawls thinks that the primary question
regarding the nature of a just society requires further specifcation regard-
ing what sort of economic system could bring this about. Here I would
like to emphasize the fact that, although Rawls provides only limited
support for meritocratic notions (a feature of Rawls’s view that is over-
emphasized by Sandel), he does not ofer a blanket repudiation of them.
In fact, the general ideas of merit and desert are so central to our judg-
ments and practices that their complete elimination would put everything
else we believe in ethics into disequilibrium. The question is not, “do
people sometimes deserve diferential treatment based on diferences in
character or performance?” (of course, they do!), but rather, “do people
deserve unequal income or power based solely or primarily on these?”
(from a Rawlsian point of view, they do not). That is, informal practices
of praise and blame can easily be brought into equilibrium with Rawlsian
political community. Citizens in a just society are motivated to participate
in political and economic systems that are consistently aimed at providing
everyone with the means to exercise and develop their capacities of self-
determination. We want to make sure, however, that goods that might be
idealized at the high end do not generate conditions in which many people
cannot secure more modest goods that are essential for such fourish-
ing (see Doppelt 1988; also Dombrowski 2011, chapter 4; Dombrowski
2001, 2019).
V. Hollenbach’s Criticisms
The purpose of the present chapter is to explore the concept of commu-
nity or, to use a roughly synonymous designation, the common good in
Rawls’s thought. It will no doubt be objected that political liberalism is
basically a political philosophy meant to justify toleration, but toleration
is not enough. Critics might wonder where the Rawlsian notion of com-
munity or the common good is to be found. These critics might not be
willing to buy into political liberalism without a clear indication of how
this view is conducive to community or the common good. David Hol-
lenbach provides a prominent example of this sort of skepticism regarding
Rawls’s thought. To achieve a polis, it will be alleged, one needs to do
more than show toleration and a live-and-let-live attitude that avoids
introducing concepts of the full human good into political discourse.
Rawls’s method of avoidance is part of a commendable hope to neutralize
potential conficts, according to Hollenbach, but the result of this method
is seen to be disastrous:
A principled commitment to avoiding sustained discourse about the

common good can produce a downward spiral in which shared mean-
ing, understanding, and community become even harder to achieve in
practice. Or, more ominously, when the pluralism of diverse groups
veers toward a state of group confict with racial or class or reli-
gious dimensions, pure tolerance can become a strategy like that of
an ostrich with its head in the sand. In my view, this is just what we
do not need.
(Hollenbach 1998, 8)
What we need, according to Hollenbach, is the realization that a human

being is, as Aristotle suggested, a political animal (zoon politikon),
although Hollenbach does not seem to notice that Rawls also in a way
agrees with this claim.
Hollenbach assumes that political liberalism violates the communitar-
ian nature of religious and other groups by placing us in an “individual-
istic isolation” that “is fnally a prison.” The question seems to be, from
the perspective of political liberalism, whether the call received by, say,
Community 21
religious communities (which in itself is perfectly compatible with liberal
justice) means that the whole body politic is being called. Another ques-
tion is whether the reasonableness required to participate in the original
position, and the resulting principles of justice, can plausibly be described
as leading to “individualistic isolation.” Nonetheless common ground
between Hollenbach and political liberalism can be established when Hol-
lenbach rightly emphasizes that justice is the premier social virtue and that
democratization on the world stage is required in order to promote inter-
national justice. This commendable language makes overlapping consen-
sus easier both nationally and internationally than it would be otherwise.
We have seen that two sorts of community or common good or solidar-
ity should be distinguished: (a) the common good as established through
some singular comprehensive religious (or philosophical) doctrine and (b)
the common good as established through a pervasive willingness to abide
by fair terms of agreement among people with diferent comprehensive
religious (or philosophical) doctrines. The latter is a type of community
or solidarity – indeed a type of love, according to Rawls, or a type of
metacommunity – largely ignored by Hollenbach. He is more fascinated
by an “intellectual solidarity” among Catholic intellectuals that provides
a model for what can be hoped for in society as a whole. However, as I
see things, intellectual community even among Catholic intellectuals is a
longshot, much less solidarity among intellectuals in general. To be fair to
Hollenbach, we should notice that the discourse across boundaries found
in the history of Christianity – early Palestinian Christians interacting
with the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, Augustine in dialogue with Stoic
and Neoplatonic thought, Thomas Aquinas appropriating ideas from
pagan and Jewish and Muslim sources – has, in fact, occurred and illus-
trates in microcosm the sort of community and solidarity that he hopes
for in the macrocosm.
Hollenbach sees a shift in Rawls from the Kantian character of TJ to
the pragmatist character of PL, where, he alleges, the original position
has been largely replaced by the historical presuppositions of Western
constitutional democracy. Hollenbach is on thin ice here for two reasons.
First, Rawls explicitly retains the original position in PL and LP; and
second, the presuppositions of Western constitutional democracy were
not absent in TJ (see, e.g., PL, 50, 54, 116, 304–310; TJ, 195, 222, 226,
243, 295, 354–357, 360, 363, 382–386, 492). There is some legitimacy
in Hollenbach’s point here, however, when it is noticed that the theory of
justice in PL is not intended as an argumentative coup de grace directed at
those who do not already share the propositions of Western constitutional
democracy (see Hollenbach 1994a, 133–134).
Rawls is not claiming, as Hollenbach alleges, that presuppositions
about the common or ultimate good are “private” because the ideals of
churches and other communal associations are certainly “public” at least
within the church or association and perhaps are public in a more general
sense if they overlap with the comprehensive doctrines of others. Virtue
and justice, as Hollenbach correctly notes, become matters of cooperation
among people with conficting views of community, and human rights are
the necessary conditions for such cooperation.
Hollenbach’s fear is that Rawls’s political liberalism would not provide
such a space, nor would it help to resolve disputes regarding the common
good if political liberalism really does involve a commitment to the Raw-
lsian method of avoidance. In fairness to Rawls, it should be emphasized
that he is not prohibiting critical engagement with others who have difer-
ent views of community or the common good from one’s own. Indeed, he
encourages such engagement. What we should not do in politics, however,
is either assert or deny any communal religious (or philosophical) compre-
hensive doctrine that is reasonable. This is what he means by “avoidance.”
It may well be the case that Richard Rorty’s (in contrast to Rawls’s) version
of liberalism fosters indiference to the truth of all moral and religious
claims, hence Hollenbach should rightly fear Rorty’s view because in the
long run it may very well threaten the dignity of persons. That is, because
of Rorty’s rejection of the correspondence theory of truth, he also rejects
the truth of all moral and religious claims, whereas Rawls is open to the
truth of such claims. Further, because such claims are often mutually exclu-
sive, we can know that some of them must be false (see Rorty 1988, 1994).
VI. Dupre’s View

But should we fear Rawls’s version of liberalism due to communitarian
concerns? Louis Dupre agrees with Hollenbach that we should because,
even if Rawls’s version of liberalism is not as prone to relativism nor as
likely to pose a threat to the dignity of persons as Rorty’s version, it none-
theless exhibits a reluctance to attribute any specifc content to the notion
of community or the common good. Fairness, Rawls’s strong suit, is not
exactly the common good, it will be alleged. Once we relativize the good
to being a matter of private choice, we deprive the choice of the absolute
quality that only the good can confer, according to Dupre. To secure each
individual’s right to do what he or she pleases, so long as others are not
hindered in doing the same, may be expeditious, indeed necessary from
a practical point of view. But, in Dupre’s stance, it can hardly pass for a
common good (see Dupre 1994).
Rawls does not deny the existence of a good-in-itself, however. He
is only insisting that granting a free choice is the necessary road to the
pursuit of such a good, should it exist. Dupre follows Hollenbach in mis-
takenly locating the tension in Rawls between public reason and private
choice, whereas Rawls is abundantly clear that the choice to accept or to
retain communal comprehensive religious (or philosophical) doctrine is
not exactly private: Rawls’s view is much more social than Hollenbach
or Dupre likes to admit.
Community 23
As a result of Hollenbach’s and Dupre’s generally careful readings of
Rawls, several criticisms of his idea (or lack of an idea, in their view) of
community or the common good are on the table. These deserve more
careful consideration than is evident in the claim that Rawls is a commu-
nitarian or a “common goodist” with respect to distributional questions,
but a liberal or an anticommon goodist with respect to the freedom of
the individual in relation to community. The best way to begin a response
to Hollenbach and Dupre is to call attention to the background culture
or the culture of civil society that undergirds political liberalism. Here
we fnd churches, universities, communities, the arts world, responsible
journalism, and so forth, where discussion of community or the common
good fourishes, as it should (see Mulhall and Swift 1992, xi; also see
PRR, 768, 774–775).
That is, political liberalism not only permits diferent views of com-
munity or the common good, it encourages them, but only when they are
expressed appropriately, reasonably. The forms of permissible public rea-
son are always several, especially regarding controversial issues. And they
are very often in fux as new variations are proposed and some older views
are no longer represented. Communitarian beliefs that are parts of some
comprehensive doctrine are welcome in the political arena as long as they
are reasonable in liberal terms. This suggests that some comprehensive
communal views – whether religious or nonreligious – are not reasonable,
but hegemonic, dogmatic, and unfair. Rawls’s idea of the traditional view
of the common good seems to be derived primarily from Thomas Aqui-
nas himself and from the more recent Thomistic perspectives ofered by
Jacques Maritain and John Finnis (see Maritain 1998; Finnis 1980). That
is, Rawls’s view of the common good is not an ersatz addition to modern
or postmodern individualism but is rooted in ideas that can be traced back
to the premodern period. However, he is well aware of the changes that
have occurred in the natural law tradition that have informed much that
has been said about strong communitarianism. Likewise, he is open to
changes that may have to occur in the future regarding political liberalism,
although it is extremely unlikely that pluralism of communities or com-
prehensive doctrines will go away any time in the near future (PRR, 775).
VII. Aristotle and Aquinas

The relationship between Rawls, on the one hand, and Aristotle and
Aquinas, on the other, is complicated. Aristotle’s infuential eudaemonis-
tic perfectionism is connected to his commitment to community or the
common good. This commitment is compatible with political liberalism
as long as it is expressed in terms of political values, rather than in terms
of a particular community or a particular comprehensive doctrine. In the
latter case it is subject to the restrictions on comprehensive doctrines, in
general, that are required in a condition of reasonable pluralism (CP, 583;
LP, 142). Nevertheless, Rawls acknowledges that Aristotle’s treatment of
happiness as an inclusive end for a human life (rather than as a dominant
end) is the most infuential in the history of philosophy and even infu-
ences Rawls’s own treatment of a rational plan of life (TJ, 481). Aristotle’s
perfectionism led him to afrm only one reasonable and rational good;
institutions were justifable to the extent that they promoted this good,
on Rawls’s interpretation of Aristotle (PL, 134).
Aristotle has to be taken seriously on the topic of community if only
because of his enormous infuence. For example, classical republicanism
in the tradition of Aristotle afrms the priority of the ancient liberties to
modern ones, such that we should encourage active participation in public
life in order to preserve basic rights and liberties. Rawls’s thought is con-
sistent with this view, at least when classical republicanism is balanced by
a commitment to modern liberties. However, political liberalism is much
more likely to be at odds with civic humanism. This latter view is a type
of essentialist Aristotelianism wherein a human being’s nature is most
fully achieved in participation in public life. Because civic humanists like
Hannah Arendt see politics as a privileged locus for our complete good,
such that without vigorous participation in politics one’s telos cannot be
achieved, it is itself a comprehensive doctrine that must be held in check
along with other comprehensive doctrines in a condition of reasonable
pluralism (PL, 205–206, 410; JF, 142–143; see Arendt 1958). Finally, in
Rawls’s undergraduate thesis he feared that when Aristotle turned God
into the good (and when Aquinas turned God into an unmoved object) he
exhibited a depersonalizing tendency that might eventually lead to egoism
and to the destruction of community (BIMSF, 107, 114, 119–120, 227;
see Dombrowski 2015a, 2015b).
Rawls’s view of community is also related to Aquinas’s views in a
complicated way. Justice is a complex of three ideas – liberty, equality,
and reward for services contributing to the common good (once primary
goods are fulflled regardless of contribution) – and these ideas are com-
patible with Aquinas’s political philosophy. But Aquinas failed to draw
out the implicit egalitarianism of these three ideas. What is needed is not
merely the announcement of these ideas, but also their interpretation and
application (CP, 193). In a similar way, Rawls’s view is compatible with
Aquinas’s stance regarding the dignity of the human person when it is
expressed as a political conception of the person, rather than in terms of
a particular comprehensive doctrine. Regarding the latter, Thomists tend
to say that all human beings desire, even if unknown to themselves, the
vision of God, just as Platonists tend to say that all human beings desire a
vision of the good. Political liberalism sets aside comprehensive accounts
of human nature such as these, although it should also be noted that it
permits them as long as they are reasonable (LP, 172).
Rawls’s view is especially at odds with Aquinas’s (and the Protestant
reformers’) stance that there is only one reasonable and rational good such
Community 25
that political institutions are justifable to the extent that they promote
this good. On this basis, intoleration of those who impede this good is jus-
tifable. This sort of intoleration, which is based on (very often dogmatic)
confdence in one’s own comprehensive doctrine, is diferent from (very
often reluctant) intoleration based on a concern for justice in a liberal
society (TJ, 189–190; PL, 34). Likewise, in Rawls’s later works, compre-
hensive liberalism, in contrast to political liberalism, is a type of utopian
communitarianism in the pejorative sense and is no better than the com-
prehensive religious views of Aquinas or Luther, but Rawls anticipated
this point even in TJ in his rejection of the communitarianism found in the
“omnicompetent laicist state” (TJ, 186). Rawls nonetheless agrees with
Aquinas on the common good when simpler cases are involved, concern-
ing which reasonable people do not disagree (e.g., the cruelty is wrong).
Here he is also in agreement with philosophers who have been positively
infuenced by Aquinas like Philippa Foot (TJ, 350–351; also Foot 1995).
That is, the importance of natural duty in Rawls (TJ, 293–301) indicates
an overlap with Aquinas’s view of natural duty, although in Rawls’s case
natural duty is afrmed without a metaphysical account of its underlying
basis (LHMP, 7).
VIII. Justice as Fairnesss

It should now be clear that justice as fairness includes a view of com-
munity or the common good in several senses, including a basic concern
for reasonable regulations to maintain interest in public order, health,
and safety. And the diference principle demands that those who are
more advantaged than others cannot say that they should be permitted
to acquire benefts that do not contribute to the welfare of others; their
natural or social advantages should be seen in political liberalism as part
of a common inheritance in that they are not deserved. So also, and this
point is almost always neglected in criticisms of justice as fairness, we are
not to illegitimately gain from the cooperative labors of others by avoid-
ing doing our fair share. Laziness is as morally bothersome, it seems, as
unreasonably gaining by virtue of traits we do not deserve. Egoism comes
in many forms. Luckily in a fair decision-making procedure no one would
agree to egoism (TJ, 97, 104, 112, 119, 240; also see Brudney 1997).
In justice as fairness it makes sense to require sacrifces from citizens
in times of social emergency when all must pitch in for the communal
good. (I write this in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.) But this is
a tricky point because what may be required in extremis is not necessar-
ily a helpful guide regarding normal circumstances. For example, if one
entered a burning building and only had time to save one of two people
inside, one’s own child and one’s neighbor, one would surely be justifed
in saving one’s child. But this does not mean that in other circumstances
it would be legitimate to harvest organs from the neighbor so as to save
the life of one’s child with a deadly disease. So also, the fact that we can
require sacrifces of citizens in emergencies for the sake of the common
good does not necessarily mean that in other circumstances we can adopt
in political philosophy a comprehensive utilitarian view wherein some
citizens’ life prospects are routinely sacrifced for the sake of the life pros-
pects of others (TJ, 178).
This criticism of utilitarianism, that when it is made into a political
philosophy it often requires sacrifces on the part of individuals for the
sake of the communal good that are disrespectful of those individuals,
is not an attack on the very notion of the communal good. The public
good or the communal good is equivalent, according to Rawls, to that
enshrined in the medieval maxim that what touches all concerns all.
This maxim should be taken seriously and declared as the public inten-
tion as long as the government does not aim at the common good in a
utilitarian or in an exploitative way. Political liberalism certainly permits
utilitarianism as a reasonable comprehensive philosophical doctrine, but
it is not to be equated with a defensible political philosophy (see TJ,
222–225, 233).
Since bitter dissensions exist in politics (think of paramilitary groups
or sharp religious antagonisms), sometimes liberty has to be restricted if
it conficts with the common good in the sense that such liberty violates
the fair terms of agreement that would arise as a result of an impartial
decision-making procedure. But intolerant sects are not a permanent
aspect of political life; just institutions can, over time, eliminate or at
least mitigate their intolerance. In what comes closest to Rawls’s defni-
tion of the communal good he says: “The common good I think of as
certain general conditions that are in an appropriate sense equally to
everyone’s advantage” (TJ, 246, also 130, 242–243, 245, 258–259).
Although Rawls is skeptical as to whether a defnition can settle any
fundamental question, from this defnition of the common good we can
see that for Rawls the common good is largely connected to the original
position and to the principles that would be agreed to there and to the
contents of overlapping consensus. He leaves open the choice between
a private property economy and a soft socialist one, but either way a
just society would have to be one that fostered the equality, opportu-
nity, and diference principles and hence legitimate community or the
common good.
Justice as fairness has a central place for the value of community, accord-
ing to Rawls, but it is best not to rely on either an undefned loose concept
of community or an aggressive view of community as an organic whole
with a life of its own distinct from, and superior to, that of its members.
Community or the common good is best served when everyone is treated
fairly, when basic goods are distributed equally, and when unequal shares
of other goods are open to all and to everyone’s advantage, especially the
least advantaged. These are both formal and material conditions for the
Community 27
just society, contra Dupre’s claim that Rawls’s view of community or the
common good is purely formal. Arrangements for, and fnancing of, the
common good are taken over by the state, which will impose binding rules
requiring payment from citizens.
IX. Public Goods

In the efort to support the common good, certain “externalities” will be
produced that counteract the very communal good that is the goal, as
in negative environmental impact produced by public utilities or private
enterprise. One essential task of government is to institute the necessary
corrections (TJ, 264–268). The idea that political rule is established solely
or primarily on human propensity to self-interest is not a defensible view.
Once again, either a private property or a socialist society (or, what might
be best, some hybrid economic system) could do well or poorly in pre-
venting injustices and damage to the environment. The key is to have the
economic system that is in place adhere to the principles of justice that
are constructed in the original position (TJ, 271).
Concerning certain public goods, the market has historically failed alto-
gether, and regarding the freedom of citizens to have a choice of careers
(and of comprehensive doctrines) collectivist varieties of socialism, with
their forced and central direction of labor and ideology, have a rather
dismal track record. In fact, command societies in general seem to be
inconsistent with the liberties that citizens can legitimately expect. In this
regard a system of markets that decentralizes the exercise of economic
power is to be commended, a decentralization that may very well require
strong antitrust intervention on the part of the state. In any event, there
are limits to what any philosophical view of justice can accomplish when
trying to detail the economic and political machinery in advance. It is
nonetheless crucial to indicate how a liberal regime, whether under a
soft socialist or a capitalist market-oriented or a mixed economy, fosters
community or the communal good, contra Hollenbach (see TJ, 272, 274,
280; see Hollenbach 1994b).
Acceptance of the principles of justice forges the bonds of civic friend-
ship that are conducive to community or the common good in a consti-
tutional democracy. These bonds are important when it is realized that
no one person can do everything she is capable of doing. Everyone must
select a course of life with the confdence that others will do the remain-
ing tasks necessary for life lived at a high level. It is through the social
union based on the needs and potentialities of others that each person
can beneft from the assets of all collectively. In this regard we are once
again led to imagine a community of humankind spread over time on the
analogy of orchestra musicians, each one of whom could have trained to
play any instrument in the orchestra, but by a kind of implicit agreement
perfected skills on one instrument to help realize the powers of all in their
joint performance. It is only in such a tacit social union that any individual
is complete (see TJ, 517, 523–525; PL, 204, 321).
The development of science, art, religion, and culture itself can be
thought of in analogous terms to the orchestra example given earlier.
There is a shared fnal end that is nonetheless arrived at through free activ-
ity of individuals. These are not examples of perfectionism in the strong
sense, however, in that the assessment of excellences in each of these
examples takes place within a democratic context. There are many types
of social union; a well-ordered and just society is in efect a social union
of social unions in which the regulative principle is that each citizen wants
others to act from principles that would be agreed to in an initial condi-
tion of equality. But the larger social plan that contains many smaller
plans or social unions does not establish a dominant end, as in the greatest
excellence of culture or a religious super-unity. It is rather a social union
(or common good or community) of social unions (or common goods or
communities) in which each can participate as a free and equal member
(TJ, 526–529, 569).
A conception of the good is ultimately connected to some (relatively)
comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrine. Each conception of
the good, it should be noted, is not fxed but develops as the persons
holding it mature over the course of life. A shared political life does not
necessarily require a shared comprehensive doctrine, nor does it require
a Kantian comprehensive autonomy, but only a commitment to political
autonomy in a context where pluralism is a given and where reasonable
people seek common ground. Such a search is what justice as fairness is all
about. The procedures developed very often appear to be neutral, and are
intended as such, but there are also substantive claims at work in liberal
proceduralism (as in the desirability of political equality, autonomy, and
reasonableness) that nonetheless fall short of comprehensive liberalism,
the latter a view that contradicts the beliefs of many citizens, especially
many religious communitarians (PL, 19–20, 98, 192).
It should now be clear that even the idea of political community should
be rejected if this idea means a unity based on one comprehensive doc-
trine. Political community should be embraced, however, if it is based
on an overlapping consensus of diferent comprehensive doctrines. The
mutual dependence involved in overlapping consensus is in no way mys-
terious. In fact, it is found whenever there is cooperation among people
with diferent comprehensive doctrines. The glue that holds together a
liberal society is not a concept of the good, but rather a shared public
conception of justice. By accommodating a plurality of conceptions of the
good, liberal society seen as a social union of social unions can coordinate
the various activities made possible by human diversity into a just society
(PL, 201, 304, 323).
Another comment is needed on Hollenbach’s desire to return to the
stronger community inspired by Aristotle. It should not escape our notice
Community 29
that in preindustrial societies individuals were indeed incorporated into
groups in a stronger sense than the inclusion found in political liberalism,
but the preindustrial incorporation was brought about in ways that we
would not fnd livable or justifable today. For example, Aristotle’s polis
had few free citizens in that most were slaves. In addition, most were
illiterate, which no doubt was conducive to the stronger sense of com-
munity there than in a liberal state, as Walter Ong has emphasized, in that
literacy has a tendency to foster free thinking. Toleration is not a sufcient
condition for a just society, but it is necessary for one. Finding what the
sufcient conditions are cannot be managed easily, and Aristotle is of lim-
ited help here, even if this will come as a blow to some. The challenge to
communitarians is to learn how to be aware of, and to critically examine,
the past in order to bring about a just society in the pervasively pluralistic
world in which we actually exist in the present (see Ong 1998, 43–44).
X. Goodness
A further challenge comes from Paul Sigmund, who thinks that democ-
racy should be based not only on a Rawlsian thin theory of the good,
but also on a thick theory. There are several reasons to take Sigmund’s
challenge seriously, one of which is that clarifcation of “the good” is
necessary to understand better “the common good” (see Sigmund 1994).
A defnition of goodness can proceed by way of two stages. First, A is a
good X if and only if A has the properties it is rational to want in an X.
Second, A is a good X for K if and only if A has the properties it is rational
for K to want in an X. These two points illustrate the Rawlsian beliefs that
goodness depends, in part, on context; that goodness depends, in part, on
the aim of a rational agent; and that the good develops rationality. One
can say that a person is a good assassin without approving the assassin’s
skills. Whether the assassin is a good person is a diferent issue. There
is a descriptive, rather than a prescriptive, character to the goodness of
many things in that these things are good if they have the properties it is
rational to want in these things. When “good” is used prescriptively, it
carries recommendatory force precisely because of its descriptive sense
(TJ, 399–400, 403–407).
A distinction between primary and nonprimary goods is required for
understanding Rawls’s view. Any person with self-respect would, from
the perspective of the original position, desire that the former be present
no matter what else is wanted. Further, there is general agreement among
philosophers of various persuasions that goodness be seen, as mentioned
earlier, as rationality. Hence, it makes sense to suspect that a good person,
rather than a good assassin or a good farmer, is one who has to a higher
degree than the average person the properties that, from the perspective
of the original position, it is rational to want in a person. These properties
would include, I assume, being a self-respecting member in good standing
of some particular community and engaging in cooperative eforts with
members of other communities. Evil people, by way of contrast, violate
the rights of others in ways that parties in the original position would
deem unjustifable. Beyond primary goods (freedom of thought, move-
ment, and choice of occupation; income and wealth; etc.) and those prin-
ciples mentioned earlier that would be chosen in the original position;
however, we should remain cautious (TJ, 433–440, 456; also PL, 308).
This caution is due to several factors, including the possibility that citi-
zens will change their minds about which conception of the good they will
adhere to. One’s moral power to form and rationally pursue a conception
of the good is such that this conception is, for various reasons, subject to
revision. Therefore, we should not stipulate in detail what the good will be
for each person based on the community to which they belong. It is true
that if we suddenly lost the convictions that dominate our community, we
would become disoriented. Usually when changes occur to our view of the
good they are gradual, but sometimes they occur suddenly such that in a
very real sense we are not the same person as before. Rawls himself cites
the example of Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, who became St.
Paul (PL, 30–31; also Laborde 2017).
For the purposes of public life, Saul of Tarsus and St. Paul are the same
person, and it is important from a political point of view that people
be allowed to convert from one community to another without being
persecuted. Otherwise people are, to varying degrees, treated like slaves
who are, in efect, socially dead because they are not sources of claims.
By way of contrast, citizens who at any given time have a determinate
conception of the good are politically autonomous. They are free within
the limits of political justice to pursue any permissible conception of the
good. Each of these permissible conceptions will, presumably, require
primary goods that are the necessary conditions for pursuing higher-order
interests, whether in public or nonpublic life (PL, 32–33, 74, 76, 79).
XI. Political Community

Because we are reasonable, we can understand various communities and
their conceptions of the good, and we may be drawn to at least one
(or some) of them. Any attractive political (rather than comprehensive)
conception of the good will conform to the goodness as rationality thesis
and to the idea of there being primary goods. Members of a democratic
society have, at least in an intuitive way, a rational plan of life. To claim
this much is not to specify any particular political view or any particular
community’s view of the good. Such specifcation ought not to be made
by the government, either. It should no more maximize the fulfllment of
wants or strong perfectionistic values than it should act to advance one
community over another. Obviously, the government should prohibit the
enactment of some conceptions of the good found in some communities,
Community 31
those that violate basic rights and liberties. But if these are not violated,
we are free to afrm our own conception of the good, which need not be,
and probably is not, idiosyncratic in that it is likely a communal value of
some sort (PL, 85, 176–179, 187, 313).
What is most likely is that we will afrm a conception of the good
rooted in some community in which we have been raised, educated, or
both. When we reach the age of reason we fnd some view at the center of
our loyalties. Some take this view on faith or are satisfed with it precisely
because it is the traditional view; still others use a subtle blend of faith
and reason. The fact that many have communal views of the good largely
based on faith is no problem for political liberalism as long as these faith-
informed views are within the bounds of justice. To have a defensible
theory of justice, however, or a theory regarding the place of the good in
political justice, requires rational argumentation, and the participants in
the original position must be willing to be moved by reasons of justice as
such (PL, 314, 316).
Of course, it is not only intellectuals who have determinate conceptions
of the good, which is appropriate because if citizens had no conceptions
of the good/common good that they tried to enact, a just society would
have no point. Some have the impression that Rawls needs to make this
claim in order to respond to strong communitarian critics of liberalism,
but he makes no such concession in that the point is crucial to theory
of justice and to political liberalism themselves regardless of the strong
communitarian stance (PL, xix, 318, 334). Justice as fairness assumes that
citizens have some determinate conception of the good and some com-
munal ties that prompt them to perform supererogatory acts beyond the
confnes of justice. No obstacles are put in the path of those who desire
to explicate and act on higher-order moral sentiments that serve to bind
a community of persons together as long as such higher-order sentiments
are not imposed on others through the political process (TJ, x, 192).
XII. Walzer’s View

From the previous observation it should be clear that there is not nearly
as wide a gap as some might suppose between Rawls and a communitar-
ian thinker like Michael Walzer (see Walzer 1983). Rawls is like Walzer
in thinking that, in addition to the toleration of reasonable diferences
found in politically liberal states, there is something like this in consulta-
tion hierarchies as well, as evidenced imaginatively in Kazanistan, the
mythical consultation hierarchy discussed in LP (76). This sort of state
is not exactly just, but it is “decent.” The deeper the confict (as in the
contemporary pervasiveness of pluralism), the higher the level of philo-
sophical abstraction that is required in order to get an uncluttered view
of its roots. That is, the Rawlsian work of abstraction is set in motion by
deep political conficts (PL, 44, 46). It should be noted that Rawls does
not go as far as Walzer in seeing all political ties deriving from consensual
acts, in that Rawls also acknowledges the force of natural duties, as we
have seen (TJ, 99). Even members of subjected minority communities, for
example, have a natural duty not to be cruel (TJ, 330). It also seems fair
to say that, despite Rawls’s defense of associational freedoms, he is not
exactly a strong communitarian like Walzer, whose view seems to require
something like a shared (somewhat) comprehensive doctrine, in partial
contrast to Rawls’s more pronounced recognition of the fact of reasonable
pluralism (see Dombrowski 2015c).
XIII. Love/Benevolence and Community

I would like to conclude by considering the relationship between love/
benevolence and community, a relationship that is much more compli-
cated than Rawls’s strong communitarian critics realize. A consideration
of this relationship will also serve to bring together the various threads of
my treatment of Rawls and community, in general.
First, Rawls defnes love and benevolence in very similar ways as the
desire to advance another person’s good as that person’s rational self-
assessment would require or as benefcial action that is performed for
another person’s good (TJ, 190, 438, 487). Second, some might wonder
why we do not build up a political philosophy on the communal basis of
such loving warmth, in contrast to the allegedly cold procedure found in
original position rationalism. And third, Rawls responds to this criticism
by pointing out that there is a difculty that arises when it is noticed that
love of several persons will likely lead to confict if these distinct persons
desire goods that are at odds with each other (and assuredly will lead
to confict if the love in question is love of mankind in general). In this
situation benevolence is at sea and requires principles of justice so as to
adjudicate the disputes that occur in a condition of conficting loves.
Love and benevolence are second-order notions in that they are con-
cerned with one’s own desires or actions in relation to the desires or
actions of others whom we want to advance. In this regard Rawls notices
the analogy between the oft-noted hazards of love and the hazards of
justice: in each case our own happiness is threatened when others are
harmed. Because of the problem of conficting loves, there is a need for
some sort of impartial decision-making procedure. But “what sort?,” it
might be asked. Rawls’s intent is to show the inferiority of the Humean/
utilitarian theory of the impartial spectator to the deliberations that occur
in the original position, where principles of justice are determined by the
litigants themselves. In a rebuke of those who see this procedure as cold
and ahistorical and acommunal, Rawls says that “The fault of the utilitar-
ian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality” (TJ, 190,
also 573). That is, it is real persons with real historical and communal
backgrounds who are the participants in the original position.
Community 33
The fact that the sense of justice and love are continuous (TJ, 476)
is confrmed by three “moments,” especially in the integral connection
between love and community in these moments. As before, however, when
many objects of love are opposed, principles of justice are needed to ofer
guidance.
The frst moment occurs in the lives of children who come to love their
parents because their parents love them. The pervasiveness of this quite
natural (although admittedly not universal) occurrence is a precondition
for a just society (TJ, 463–466). It is a precondition for a just society
because such mutual love is the basis for all-important reciprocity. When
we are loved, our sense of self-esteem is enhanced, which in turn secures
the social basis for self-respect that Rawls sees as the most important
primary good. Community would soon dissolve if love were answered
with hate. Indeed, he thinks that evolutionary history would have weeded
out any “communities” wherein hate would be a normal response to love
(TJ, 494–495). In short, being a member of loving familial and associative
communities is a natural circumstance of society, a circumstance that is
presupposed by any society that approximates justice (TJ, 438).
A second moment occurs in the relationship between love and the origi-
nal position, while the third occurs “after” the original position when love
plays various diferent roles in the comprehensive doctrines that citizens
afrm and in the various communities within which citizens live and four-
ish. Despite the analogy between love and a sense of justice, love very often
involves a greater intensity of desire than a sense of justice and hence often
prompts supererogatory actions beyond those that are required as a matter
of basic justice (TJ, 190, 478–479, 484). Building on what I have said ear-
lier regarding the plurality of concepts of good that citizens afrm, the loves
that are parts of some reasonable comprehensive doctrines, but not others,
are to be permitted, but not required (see Mendus 1999; Voice 2015).
The close relationship between love and just communities is evidenced
by the fact that it is found not only in communal life that antedates and
postdates the original position (moments one and three, respectively), but
also in the complicated relationship between love and the original position
itself. It must be admitted that there is nothing to be gained by attributing
love or benevolence to parties in the original position in that such attribu-
tion would be seen as “cooking the books” in favor of Rawls’s principles
of justice. But the fact that the parties in the original position are, strictly
speaking, not so much individuals as “continuing strands” of families
and communities, and of the loves found in families and communities, is
noteworthy (TJ, 190–191).
In a key, yet largely neglected, passage Rawls says the following:
Now the combination of mutual disinterest and the veil of ignorance

achieves the same purpose as benevolence. For this combination of
conditions forces each person in the original position to take the good
of others into account. In justice as fairness, then, the efects of good
will are brought about by several conditions working jointly. The
feeling that this conception of justice is egoistic is an illusion fostered
by looking at but one of the elements of the original position.
(TJ, 148)
I am claiming that Rawls’s view is that a just society is composed at the

most general level of a loving political community of more particular
loving communities. The combination of mutual disinterest and the veil
of ignorance (rather than the former alone) achieves the same results as
would be achieved if the society in question were established by a com-
mittee of saints, by a committee of loving or benevolent agents. This is
because in the original position the deliberating parties are forced to take
the good of others into account (which, it will be remembered, is the dis-
tinguishing feature of love and benevolence). The fact that Rawls is able to
achieve the goal of defensible principles of justice on such a parsimonious
basis remains the greatest accomplishment in political philosophy of the
past 150 years.
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THE BATTLE OF APACHE CAÑON.
March 28, 1862.
The immediate consequence of the battle of Valvende was that the

insurgents marched directly past Fort Craig, which for want of men
and provisions they were powerless to invest or capture, direct on
Albuquerque and Santa Fé, which fell into their power without
resistance. Albuquerque was the depot of United States Government
stores, most of which was removed on the advance of the insurgents,
and the rest destroyed. The occupation of Santa Fé was followed by
the proclamation of a provisional government, which however never
entered into practical operation. Fort Craig still remained in the
rebel rear, and Fort Union in the possession of the national troops,
on the north-east, from which direction reinforcements might be
expected. The policy of the insurgents was therefore either to capture
Fort Union before relief could arrive, or maintain their position,
isolating Fort Craig until that post should be compelled to surrender
for want of supplies.
Meantime, news of the critical condition of affairs having reached
the Colorado territory and Kansas, troops were at once organized to
go to the relief of the threatened positions. By forced marches,
scarcely paralleled in history, a Colorado regiment 950 strong, under
Colonel Hough, reached Fort Union on the 13th of March. Here he
gathered around him all the troops available, or possible to obtain,
and marched for Santa Fé, to give battle to the invaders. The latter
moved their forces forward to meet him. The numbers on both sides
were nearly equal—between 1,200 and 1,500. They met at a point
called Apache Pass.
The main fight took place at Apache Cañon, eighty miles from Fort
Union, and twenty miles from Santa Fé. Three battalions, one under
Major Chivington, one under Captain Lewis, and one under Captain
Wynkoop, advanced to the cañon, on the 28th, when the pickets
reported no enemy in sight. The command then advanced, when
shots were fired at them by the Texans, who were in ambush and
succeeded in killing four privates. The Union men, under Hough,
rushed on them, killing 20 or 30 Texans, wounding many of them,
and taking seven prisoners, four officers and three privates. Major
Chivington’s command, which went ahead and surprised the Texan
pickets, taking 67 prisoners, and 64 provision wagons, now arrived,
and a plan of action was determined upon. It was to meet the enemy
in front and flank them at the same time.
About 12 o’clock they advanced, and the action became general,
the Coloradans doing wonders. The battery under Captain Ritter,
and also the howitzer battery under Lieutenant Claflin, swept the
Texans from the field. The fight lasted until four o’clock, when flags
of truce were interchanged to bury the dead and care for the
wounded. The enemy had about 2,000 men and one 6-pounder. The
Unionists had 1,300 men, one six and one 12-pounder, and four
howitzers. The enemy lost their entire train (64 wagons and
provisions), 230 mules, about 150 killed, 200 wounded and 93 taken
prisoners, among whom were 13 officers.
The Texans, when surprised, supposed it was Colonel Canby’s
force that was coming. The Texan officer in command, with two of
his companies, made several attempts to charge on the Union men
and seize their batteries, but they were each time repulsed, with
tremendous loss, while daring, noble deeds were performed by the
Federal soldiers. At one time, the Texan companies charged within a
few yards of the Union batteries.
The defeat at Apache Pass proved an effectual check on the
invaders, and so far weakened their forces as to compel their
abandonment of the territory, and its complete restoration under the
national authority.
The enemy fled into Arizona, where they found it useless to
remain, and applied to the authorities of Mexico for permission to
cross their territory on their return home, but were refused; they
however succeeded in reaching Texas. A reinforcement of Federal
troops soon after arrived in New Mexico.
FIGHT AT BLOOMING GAP, VA.
February 14, 1862.
To General F. W. Lander’s brigade had been assigned the perilous

duty of protecting the Baltimore and Ohio railroad at Cumberland,
Md., and the various towns and strategic points in Virginia within a
radius of forty or fifty miles from that centre, at several of which his
troops were quartered.
On the 13th of February, Lander received information that a
brigade of rebels under General Carson had occupied Blooming Gap,
a strong pass in the mountains seven miles beyond the Cacapon
river, whose turbid waters, swollen by the storms of winter, were
deemed an impassable barrier to the advance of the Federal forces.
No bridge spanned the torrent, and the blackened buttress and
crumbled pier gave evidence that the incendiary torch had been at
work.
Lander was then at Pawpaw Tunnels, on the Maryland shore of the
Potomac, a station on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, midway
between Hancock and Cumberland, with a small force. He
immediately marched to New Creek, in Hampshire county, Va., to
join the detachment of troops at that point, where he also hastily
concentrated all his available command. Taking twenty wagons
loaded with lumber, he proceeded to a point on the Cacapon river,
seven miles south of the railroad, and between the hours of nine and
one o’clock at night he improvised a bridge one hundred and eighty
feet long, by placing the wagons in the river as a foundation, over
which he marched his force of four thousand men, and advanced
upon the enemy’s pickets before the dawn of day.
With five hundred of the First Virginia cavalry, under Colonel
Anastanzel, he had designed to charge through the rebel camp at the
Gap, and then form immediately in his rear, cut off the retreat, and
capture the whole force, after the Federal infantry, following up the
cavalry charge, should have completed the discomfiture of the
enemy. But the rebels had retired before Lander’s approach; and
when led by the General and his staff, the cavalry flew through the
Gap and beyond it, they met with no opposition. Colonel Anastanzel
was at once ordered to push forward on the Winchester road with the
cavalry, reconnoitre, and, if possible, overtake and capture the
baggage of the enemy.
General Lander meantime brought up Colonel Carroll with the
Eighth Ohio regiment, and the Seventh Virginia, Colonel Evans, for a
support. Colonel Anastanzel encountered the enemy at the head of
the pass, two miles from Blooming. He was met by a sharp fire, and
halted his command. On hearing the firing, General Lander came up
and led the charge, followed by Major Armstrong, Assistant
Adjutant-General; Lieutenants Fitz-James O’Brien, the well-known
poet of his staff, and Major Bannister, Paymaster U.S.A., who had
volunteered for the expedition. A group of rebel officers were distant
about three hundred yards, encouraging their men. General Lander
being the best mounted, outran the rest of the party, and cut off the
retreat of the rebel officers.
“Surrender, gentlemen,” he said, coolly dismounting, and
extending his hand to receive the sword of Colonel Baldwin, over
whom an instant before he had appeared to be riding.
Five of the rebel officers surrendered to General Lander, and four
others immediately afterward, to the officers of his staff, among them
the Assistant Adjutant-General of General Carson.
By this time the rebel infantry, perceiving the small number of
their adversaries, commenced a heavy fire from the woods, but the
cavalry had recovered from its panic, and now rushed up the hill.
General Lander ordered Anastanzel to charge up the road, and
capture the baggage of the enemy. The cavalry dashed forward, and
the advance guard soon overtook and turned fifteen wagons and
horses out of the road. Colonel Evans now came up with his regiment
of infantry, and captured many more of the rebels. Colonel Carroll
cleared the road as he went, both infantry regiments behaving
admirably, following and engaging the enemy to the last, until
ordered back. The pursuit was continued eight miles.
The result of this affair was the capture of eighteen commissioned
officers, and forty-five non-commissioned officers and privates.
Thirty-three of the rebels were killed and wounded, with a loss on the
Union side of seven killed and wounded.
During this engagement Lieutenant Fitz-James O’Brien was shot
mortally while in advance of his comrades, and like the author-
soldier Winthrop, immortalized his name with the sword, as he had
before proved himself great with the pen.
General Dunning, of Lander’s command, returned to New Creek
the same day from an expedition to Moorfield, forty miles south of
Romney, having captured 225 beef cattle and 4,000 bushels of corn.
In a skirmish two of his men were wounded, and several rebels
killed.
EAST TENNESSEE UNDER CONFEDERATE
RULE.
The history of the world has never exhibited more exalted devotion
to an idea, nor a more splendid patriotism than that of the people of
East Tennessee. We may almost challenge the records of religious
history to produce anything more like holy enthusiasm, than the lofty
inspiration which has characterized these people. In no country, and
among no class can be found more heroic persistence or unfaltering
adherence to principle than has exalted the patriotism of this region.
With many inhabitants of the eastern portion of the State, loyalty
and devotion to the Union became in truth a part of their religion.
The rebel leaders knew that they had very little sympathy in East
Tennessee, and took measures to crush out all Union sentiment with
the iron heel of military despotism. Any expression of sympathy with
the Union cause, any co-operation of its inhabitants with the
loyalists, either for their own protection or for the aid of the
Government, was punished as a crime. The presses of that part of the
State had all been silenced or converted to their own use by the
Secessionists, with one exception. The Knoxville Whig remained true
to the Union. Its vigorous defence of the Government, its exposures
and denunciations of the rebel leaders, its unsparing invective
against the rebellion, and its bold, defiant appeals to the people, rang
like a clarion through the hills and valleys of East Tennessee, and as
the echo gathered from thousands of loyal voices, it made itself heard
through all the valleys and mountain passes of that noble border
State.
The heroic editor of this paper was not to be silenced either in his
voice or his press without a vigorous struggle. The Rev. Wm. G.
Brownlow had learned how to denounce and how to endure, for that
is a lesson most Methodist clergymen are called upon to learn; and
being brave in deeds as well as words, he stood forth in defence of
the country he loved, when she greatly needed the power of his
eloquence and the strength of his arm. The popularity which this
man had won by his uprightness, his courage, and firm adherence to
the Constitution, gave his opinions a force that made him an object
of peculiar importance to the enemy—yet they hesitated to lay violent
hands upon a man whose words were more potent than their
bayonets.
He was frequently threatened by soldiers passing through
Knoxville from other States, yet none dared to execute their threats.
His family were inspired with the same lofty heroism, and on one
occasion when a company of rebels came to his house to haul down
the Stars and Stripes, which was kept floating over his domicil, one
of his daughters stepped out to meet them, and by her courage and
decision protected the flag.
The suppression of this undaunted advocate of the Union, and
faithful and fearless witness against secession, became an inevitable
necessity; and at last, in the hope that he would at least become
silent on political affairs, it was resolved to offer him the alternative
of the oath of allegiance or the cell of a prison. He chose the latter,
and in a valedictory to his readers, published October 26, which must
ever be memorable for its heroic defence of the Union, its bold
denunciation of the rebels and their course, he announced to his
readers the suspension of his paper. This remarkable address, which,
under the circumstances, rises to the sublime in its moral courage,
closed with these words:
“Exchanging, with proud satisfaction, the editorial chair and the sweet
endearments of home for a cell in the prison, or the lot of an exile, I have the honor
to be, &c.
William G. Brownlow.”
Mr. Brownlow was sent to prison, and for months occupied a room
with several other patriots who preferred imprisonment to denial of
the government they loved. Here he was in daily expectation of being
led forth to execution. Though suffering from ill-health he was no
way daunted by the dark fate that threatened him. Nor were these
anticipations groundless, for during his stay there, many a brave
man left that prison to meet a violent death, and he had no reason to
expect a happier destiny.
During the closing months of the summer and fall the hopes of the
people were excited by promises of aid from the government. Loud
and earnest appeals were made for help, and with the energy of
despair the people clung to their principles, through every species of
persecution, robbery, arson, and imprisonment. Hundreds were
hung or assassinated, and the records of Tennessee are among the
most heart-rending that this war for the Union will leave to posterity.
The position of the rebel armies in western Tennessee was at that
time very strong, but the importance of keeping their lines of
communication open with the Atlantic States was great, and
thoroughly understood by the loyalists. To cut these lines was to the
Federals a work of pressing necessity; and in view of the probable
redemption of East Tennessee, the loyalists organized, and on the
night of November 8 they destroyed several bridges, and broke the
lines. Two of these were on the Georgia State road, two on
Chickamanye Creek, Hamilton county, and one on the East
Tennessee and Georgia railroad, on Hiawassee river, Bradley county.
Besides these, two bridges on the East Tennessee and Georgia
railroad on Lick Creek, Green County, and another on Holstein river,
were also burned. The rebels were thrown into consternation by
these events, and their leaders took the most active measures to
arrest and punish the perpetrators. A correspondence between some
of the prominent men ensued, and a large portion of the letters was
discovered among other papers and effects captured after the battle
of Mill Spring, which took place on the 19th of January, 1862. This
correspondence, in which the names Colonel William B. Wood and
General F. K. Zollicoffer appear, prove that the majority of the people
were unalterably for the Union, and that they could only be
restrained by the most oppressive and cruel measures. Colonel Wood
wrote to J. P. Benjamin, the Secretary of War, asking what
disposition should be made of the bridge-burners, to which Mr.
Benjamin replied—“All such as can be identified as having been
engaged in bridge-burning are to be tried summarily by drumhead
court-martial, and if found guilty, executed on the spot by hanging. It
would be well to leave their bodies hanging in the vicinity of the
burnt bridges.”
The loyalists were encouraged in their cause by the devotion of
Hon. Andrew Johnson, U. S. Senator, and Hon. Horace Maynard, M.
C., for Tennessee, whose eloquent and powerful appeals, and
confident assurances of aid, cheered the hearts of the people.
Thousands of East Tennesseeans escaped by night, wandering
along unfrequented roads, until they reached Kentucky, where they
organized regiments, under the direction of the Federal
commanders. Their cherished desire was to return to their own State,
with a powerful army, and redeem their soil. The atrocity of the rebel
guerrillas drove them almost to a passion of revenge, and when
disappointed at the announcement that their time had not come, and
that they must await a more favorable condition of the army,
hundreds of them, when ordered to retreat from the border lines of
their State, strayed from the ranks, despairing and heart-sick, and
falling down by the way, wept bitterly. Several of them, exhausted by
hard labor and forced marches, never rose again, but were
afterwards found dead on the road to Mount Vernon.
On the 26th of November the house of a gentleman named Bell
was attacked by an armed party of the enemy and set on fire. The
inmates, a large family of nine persons, were consigned to the
flames. Two alone of the whole household escaped this horrible fate.
On the 29th a band of twenty-one Union prisoners at Nashville
were compelled to take the oath of allegiance, and enter a company
in the rebel army.
Leadbetter, the secession commander in East Tennessee, had his
headquarters at Greenville, and on the 30th of November issued a
proclamation promising protection and pardon to all who would lay
down their arms and submit to the Confederate government. From
this clemency he excepted bridge-burners and destroyers of railroad
tracks. He closed his proclamation with the assurance that “they will
be tried by drumhead court-martial, and be hung on the spot.” This
terrible order was put into execution a few days afterward. Jacob M.
Hemslier and Henry Fry, two Unionists, being tried and pronounced
guilty of these offences, were hung.
The days of hope for the Unionists were weary and prolonged, but
deliverance was drawing nigh. The loyal men of the western part of
the State organized to oppose the measures of the leaders, and early
in January a bold resistance was made in Carroll, Weakly, McNairy,
and other counties, against the conscription act. Rebel troops were
sent into these counties to compel submission, and enforce
obedience.
The defeat and death of Zollicoffer, the breaking up of his army,
and the destruction of his stronghold, at last gave a brilliant promise
to these persecuted people that their deliverance was drawing nigh.
This event, succeeded in a few weeks by the capture of Fort Henry,
Fort Donelson, the evacuation of Bowling Green and Columbus, and
the occupation of Nashville, filled every true heart with rejoicing, and
the good old flag once more swept its folds freely over the houses of
East Tennessee.
BOMBARDMENT OF FORT HENRY, FEB. 6, 1862.
The appointment of Hon. Andrew Johnson as military governor of

Tennessee was greeted with enthusiasm by the people. His
reputation and conservative principles were a guarantee for the
character of his administration, and he soon began to rally to his
support the wavering and timid of the people who were still
apprehensive that the Confederates would return and restore their
rule.
Parson Brownlow, after having borne a long and severe
confinement in prison, in which his health suffered terribly, was
released, and sent beyond the military lines of the Confederates. His
reception by the Federal guards was enthusiastic and joyous in the
extreme. As soon as his health permitted he visited several cities in
the West, where he was greeted with overwhelming demonstrations
of popular admiration and respect. On his arrival at New York, May
17th, he was honored with a public reception at the Academy of
Music, which was densely filled with a brilliant audience, eager to
welcome him.
CAPTURE OF FORT HENRY, TENN.
February 6, 1862.
The brilliant victory obtained by General Thomas’ army over the

Confederate forces at Mill Spring, on the 19th of January, laid open
the rebel lines to the successful advance of the Federal arms, and
served to stimulate the commanders of the land and naval forces to
avail themselves of the opportunity thus afforded.
Previous to the battle of Mill Spring, General Grant, with a large
force, had left Cairo and marched toward Columbus, for the purpose
of reconnoitering the country, and to prevent rebel reinforcements
moving from that point to the assistance of General Buckner, at
Bowling Green, Ky., who was then threatened by the approach of
General Buell’s army. Upon the return of General Grant’s division to
Cairo, a combined movement of the land and naval forces was
determined on for the purpose of capturing Fort Henry, on the
Tennessee river, in Henry county, Tenn., just beyond the Kentucky
State line.
Fort Henry and its approaches were reconnoitered on the 21st
January by the United States gunboat Lexington, with a view to
ascertain its strength and the position of the rebels. She went within
two miles of the fort, and flung a number of shells into it without
eliciting any reply. At first it was thought the rebels had evacuated
the work, but on approaching it still nearer pickets were discovered
at various points. The heavy guns on the work were seen distinctly;
also a number of field pieces. In addition to the fort proper,
numerous earthworks had been thrown up on a high bluff above the
fort, on the west bank of the river. This additional work, named Fort
Hieman, commanded Fort Henry.
On the 22d January, Brigadier-General C. F. Smith, commanding
the second division of General Grant’s army, was at Crown Point,
Ky., where he had arrived with 6,000 men after a fatiguing march of
over 100 miles from Paducah. He proceeded thence on a personal
reconnoissance, on the gunboat Lexington, in the direction of Fort
Henry. The gunboat advanced up the west channel of the river to a
point within one mile and a half from the fort. General Smith
obtained an excellent view of the rebel fort, camp and garrison, and
sent his report to headquarters. He then marched his division back to
Paducah.
The flotilla of gunboats, which had been so long in course of
preparation on the Ohio and Mississippi, was now ready to take part
in the impending battles of the nation, and to assume that
prominence in the momentous events which were to follow to which
they have proved themselves justly entitled.
Flag-officer Andrew H. Foote was appointed by the Government to
command the naval forces on the Upper Mississippi and the Western
waters, and now led forth his gallant fleet to attack the enemy, in
conjunction with the land forces under General Ulysses S. Grant. The
fleet consisted of
Fleet Officers.—Flag-Officer Andrew H. Foote; Fleet Captain,
Commodore A. M. Pennock; Ordnance Officer, Lieutenant J. F.
Sanford; Ordnance Lieutenant, Byron Wilson; Flag Lieutenant,
James M. Prickett. Essex, 9 guns, Commander William D. Porter. St.
Louis, 13 guns, Lieutenant-Commanding Leonard Paulding.
Cincinnati, 13 guns, Commander R. N. Stembel. Carondelet, 13
guns, Commander Henry Walke. Conestoga, 9 guns, Lieutenant-
Commanding —— Phelps. Tyler, 9 guns, Lieutenant-Commanding
W. Gwin.
For several days, at Paducah, the utmost vigilance was exercised at
the headquarters of the Provost Marshal, in issuing passes, and on
Sunday and Monday, the 3d February, no persons were allowed in or
out of the lines. Half a dozen gunboats steamed leisurely into port
and brought their black forms to anchor opposite the levee, in the
centre of the river.
Monday afternoon, steamers commenced coming up from Cairo,
laden with troops and stores, and by night the whole landing in front
of the town was crowded with the arrivals. The fleet which came up
brought General Grant and Staff, and the first division, under
command of Brigadier-General McClernand. The steamers were
under command of Commodore G. W. Graham, and consisted of the
following boats: City of Memphis, Iatan, D. A. January, Chancellor,
Alp, “W. H. B.,” New Uncle Sam, Rob Roy, Alex. Scott, Minnehaha,
Illinois, Emerald, and Fanny Bullett.
The first division, on these boats, was made up of two brigades,
composed as follows, and commanded by General John A.
McClernand:—First Brigade, Colonel Oglesby, Commanding.—
Seventh Illinois, Colonel Cook; Eighth Illinois, Lieutenant-Colonel
Rhoades; Eighteenth Illinois, Lieutenant-Colonel Lawler; Twenty-
ninth Illinois, Colonel Reardon; Thirtieth Illinois, Lieutenant-
Colonel Dennis; Thirty-first Illinois, Colonel John A. Logan; Swartz’s
and Dresser’s Batteries; Stewart’s, Dollins’, O. Harnett’s and
Carmichael’s Cavalry.
Second Brigade, W. H. L. Wallace, Commanding.—Eleventh
Illinois, Lieutenant-Colonel Hart; Twentieth Illinois, Colonel Marsh;
Forty-fifth Illinois, Colonel Smith; Forty-eighth Illinois, Colonel
Harney; Taylor’s and McAllister’s Batteries—in the latter four siege
guns; Fourth Illinois Cavalry, Colonel Kellogg; Seventh Illinois
Cavalry, Colonel Dickey.
Soon after arriving, General Grant and staff paid a visit to General
Smith, and had a conference, in which it was determined to forward
the division of General McClernand that night, and after landing
them at some point below Fort Henry, out of range of its guns, send
the boats back after General Smith’s division at Paducah. It was
nearly midnight before the boats took their departure.
The point at which the troops were landed is about four or five
miles below Fort Henry, opposite a small town in Kentucky, called
Buffalo. Immediately at the place is a clearing of about one hundred
acres, surrounded on three sides by high bluffs densely timbered,
and reaching down to the river. The troops, on landing, immediately
took possession of these eminences, and planted batteries which
commanded the country in every direction, and then awaited the
arrival of the remaining forces, under General Smith.
Tuesday afternoon, while the troops were disembarking, the
Osband Cavalry, with Carson’s and Carpenter’s scouts thoroughly
examined the country in every direction, even up to within two miles
of Fort Henry. Tuesday night was beautiful; a thousand camp-fires
flashed through the shadows that lay upon the amphitheatre of
wooded hills. The sky was warm and serenely purple, as if brooding
over the first sweet blossoms of May. The silver crescent of a new
moon glittered in the western sky, shedding a faint radiance over the
tree-tops and sloping hill sides. All at once the music of half a dozen
bands broke through the stillness of this lovely scene, and the “Star-
Spangled Banner,” “Red, White and Blue,” and “Columbia the Gem
of the Ocean,” filled the night with bursts of patriotic music. Then
some dreamy strain followed, hushing the soldier’s heart with
thoughts of “Home, Sweet Home.”
On Wednesday, parties were out reconnoitering near the enemy’s
works, and in one case a squad of cavalry went within a mile of the
fort and encountered two hundred rebel horsemen. Both sides fired,
when the rebels ran, leaving one of their number dead, and carrying
off three severely wounded. One man on the Union side was shot
through the brain, and killed instantly. He was the first man who
gave up his life in the vicinity of Fort Henry.
It had been noticed that a steamer belonging to the rebels was
busily engaged in running from the fortifications to some point up or
across the river, which was doubtless bringing in reinforcements.
Two of the gunboats—the Taylor and Conestoga, ran up to nearly the
centre of the island, and dropped a few shells in the direction of the
fort and the steamer, with what result was not known. They effected
a thorough reconnoissance on both sides, and discovered two ugly
torpedoes sunk in the west channel, which they carefully hauled out
and towed down to the shore below.
During the day and night the division of General Smith, from
Paducah, arrived, and was landed on the west shore of the river, with
a view of operating against batteries supposed to be on that side, and
also to counteract a large body of troops, which scouts reported to be
concentrating opposite the fort.
Wednesday night was cold and most disagreeable. About eight
o’clock a heavy storm set in, which speedily quenched the camp-fires,
and sent the troops wet and disconsolate under any shelter that
could be found. All over the southern horizon, in the direction of Fort
Henry, a tremendous thunder storm swept its way, filling the hills
with flashes of fiery blue lightning, and shaking the forests with loud
reverberations of thunder. Hailing this burst of heaven’s artillery,
rolling southward toward the enemy, as a good omen, the Union
soldiers pulled the wet blankets closer around them, turned drearily
in the yielding mud, and fell asleep.
Thursday dawned cloudily, but towards nine o’clock it cleared up
and the sun came out warm and gloriously. Nature nowhere seemed
to anticipate the bloody event which gives the day prominence. A few
more troops arrived, among whom were the Ohio Seventh, Colonel
Lauman, and the Ohio Twelfth, Colonel Wood, both from Smithland,
and which, together with the Seventh Illinois, Lieutenant-Colonel
Bancock; Thirteenth Missouri, Colonel Wright; the Fifteenth Illinois,
Colonel ——, and Company D, First Missouri Artillery, made the
Third Brigade, Colonel John Cook commanding, assigned the right
wing of the advance up the Tennessee shore.
About ten o’clock the gunboats started slowly up the river, four
iron clad steamers leading abreast—the Essex, Captain Porter, on the
right, and the Cincinnati, Commodore Foote, on the left. The three
wooden gunboats ranged themselves abreast and followed, half a
mile or so to the rear.
The iron-clad boats moved up abreast, keeping up the west or high
water channel. Almost immediately on passing the lower end of the
island, the boats and the forts were in each others’ range, but on both
sides an ominous silence was preserved—a silence that betokened
deadly intent on the part of the belligerents. On swept the boats,
coming in full view of the long line of breastworks that broke the east
shore—in full view of the black muzzles of the heavy guns which
seemed watching the approach of the gallant little fleet in ominous
silence—in full view of the flag waving defiantly from a high staff in
the centre of the works, until one could almost see down the huge
bore of the guns, the bright straps of the shells, which seemed like
leashes to prevent the deadly missiles from springing forth upon
their work of destruction—and yet not a trigger was pulled on either
side.
Less than a mile separated the fleet and the fort, and yet not a
word was said. The insurgents appeared to be confidently
anticipating the conflict; and grouped like statues around their guns,
with lanyards stretched, they waited for the onset.
When about six hundred yards from the fort, the bow-guns of the
flag-ship poured their contents into it, and so close after, that the
reports seemed almost one, the other three poured in their fire.
Scarcely had the smoke cleared from the muzzles of the pieces, ere
the whole ten guns of the rebels belched forth their contents, sending
a terrific iron shower in, above and around the gunboats. Taking
their cue from the others, the three wooden gunboats, which were
about a mile below, opened from their bow-guns, and then the
contest was fairly begun. For one hour the roar was so incessant that
the successive reports of the guns could not, in many cases, be
distinguished. Occasionally there would be a momentary lull—then a
single reverberating roar would give the key-note, and an instant
after all the voices would swell together in one tremendous chorus.
A thick cloud of smoke enveloped the boats, hiding them
completely from view. Over them hovered a dense white vapor, from
which quick flashes of flame leaped and quivered, incessantly
followed by delicate balloon-like forms of smoke, which burst like
ghostly shadows from the enemy’s shells.
From the very first, the fire of the rebel guns seemed directed at
the Essex. In their first volley two thirty-two pound shots struck the
Essex on the starboard bow, indenting deeply the iron sheathing, and
then glanced off, down the river, while a perfect storm of the iron
missiles whistled over her decks, and plowed into the water on either
side. She received in all eleven shots—one of which carried death
through the whole length of the vessel. It entered a larboard port,
carried off the head of the master’s mate, and passing on, entered the
boiler. The steam and water poured out, filling the whole space
between decks, and causing more destruction than all the enemy’s
missiles put together—four men were instantly suffocated, and some
twenty-five severely scalded, among whom was the gallant
Commander Porter. The two pilots, who were in the pilot-house
above, had no escape except through a passage from below, and up
this the steam rushed, as if coming from a safety-valve, and of course
with fatal effect. Both these poor men perished.
Of course the Essex was thenceforth unmanageable. She slowly
drifted down the main channel, and was soon after met by a steamer,
which towed her down to the place occupied by the boats before
starting. Soon after the Essex became disabled, the pelting of the iron
storm proved too hot for endurance, and the rebel flag came rapidly
down. The firing on the part of the gunboats immediately ceased,
and messengers were sent off from the flag-boat, which found, upon
landing, that the rebels were disposed to an unconditional surrender.
In scarcely more than an hour after the first attack, the flag of Fort
Henry was in the dust.
The fort was soon after taken possession of, and it was found that
the sum total of rebel prisoners was between seventy and one
hundred, the balance having left the night before on the steamer
Dunbar.
Among those who surrendered were Brigadier-General Tilghman,
Major Corrico, Colonel Carmichael, Captain Hayden, of the
Engineers, and Captain Miller, with several other commissioned
officers.
Ten of the rebels were found killed, and some twelve or fifteen
wounded. Three hundred and six tents were found on the west side
of the river, and about as many near the fort, all of which bore
evidences of the haste with which the rebels had evacuated their
quarters. Several hundred stands of arms were found, chiefly squirrel
rifles and double-barrelled shot-guns, also a large amount of
clothing, forage, provisions, wagons, mules and horses.
There was a large supply of ammunition, and when the Union
forces entered the fort there was beside each gun an abundance
unexpended. The tents were new and of excellent make, sufficient to
shelter five or six thousand men. The enemy had flour, corn, bacon
and sugar in large quantities, but no salt, and not a large supply of
beef.
There were nineteen guns in position, of the following calibre: two
128-pounders, one 80-pounder, two 42-pounders, rifled, ten 32-
pounders, two 24-pound howitzers, two 12-pound howitzers. Three
6-pound smooth bores, five 6-pound rifles, found outside the
intrenchments.
A twenty-four-pound rifled gun exploded on the fourth round, and
near the close of the fight a shell from one of the Union boats entered
the eighty-pounder and burst, disabling it. Several caissons were
captured in the redan upon the west side of the river, but no guns
were in position.
Evidences abounded on all sides of the deadly accuracy of the
Federal gunners. Every one of the eleven log buildings within the
ramparts was perforated with shot, the roof of one of the small
magazines was torn open, hurdle-work scattered in all direction, half
the guns knocked out of place, and great gulleys cut in the parapet
and the ground. A thirty-two pounder bearing upon the gunboats
had been struck by a Union shell, completely shattering the muzzle.
The ground beside the embrasure was stained with blood, which lay
in pools on the uneven surface. Beside one of the buildings, with gray
blankets thrown hastily over them, lay six dead soldiers, all fearfully
mutilated. Inside, ten wounded men were stretched upon cots, or on
the ground, some insensible, and others rending the air with groans,
while the surgeons of the garrison were attending upon them. Just
above, on the river, was the hospital ship of the rebels, the stern-
wheel steamer R. M. Patten, which had been captured with the fort.
The ensign of disease, the yellow flag, was flying from the staff,
waving off destruction from sixty invalids.

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John Rawls and the Common Good

Roberto Luppi is Research Fellow at Libera Università Maria Ss. Assunta,

The Social Institution of Discursive Norms

Epistemic Uses of Imagination

Political Philosophy from an Intercultural Perspective

The Single-Minded Animal

Autonomy and Equality

Contractarianism, Role Obligations, and Political Morality

Force, Content, and the Unity of the Proposition

Philosophy of Love in the Past, Present, and Future

John Rawls and the Common Good

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Edited by Roberto Luppi

List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s Texts vii

John Rawls and the Common Good: An Introduction 1

2 Faith and the Common Good in the Political Philosophy

3 Fraternity (and the Diference Principle) 59

4 Friendship: A Familiar Value 76

5 Gender Justice, Rawls, and the Common Good 96

6 Love: The Vices of Love and Rawlsian Justice 122

7 Political Liberty 140

8 Reciprocity and Justifcation in Political Liberalism:

10 Sense of Justice 204

Notes on Contributors 249

This book celebrates an important anniversary in contemporary phi-

It is a fundamental, almost defning, tenet of liberalism that the gov-

Liberalism is said to undermine community, to restrict unduly oppor-

I. Rawls and the Common Good

I. Individuation Through Community

III. Communal Virtues

IV. The Diference Principle

A principled commitment to avoiding sustained discourse about the

What we need, according to Hollenbach, is the realization that a human

VI. Dupre’s View

VII. Aristotle and Aquinas

VIII. Justice as Fairnesss

IX. Public Goods

XI. Political Community

XII. Walzer’s View

XIII. Love/Benevolence and Community

Now the combination of mutual disinterest and the veil of ignorance

I am claiming that Rawls’s view is that a just society is composed at the

March 28, 1862.

The immediate consequence of the battle of Valvende was that the

February 14, 1862.

To General F. W. Lander’s brigade had been assigned the perilous

BOMBARDMENT OF FORT HENRY, FEB. 6, 1862.

The appointment of Hon. Andrew Johnson as military governor of

The brilliant victory obtained by General Thomas’ army over the

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