Bleached Foundations 127forward a universally valid case in favour of liberal egalitarian principles’, which he
also considers to be what Rawls’Theory of Justicewas really about (Barry 1995: xi, 3,
5). For Barry, justice must go beyond single societies. He consequently disapproves of
Rawls’ later workPolitical Liberalism(1993), a disapproval that becomes much more
marked when he considers communitarian notions of justice. For Barry,contrathe
later Rawls and communitarians, mass political culture is ‘labile’ and there is ‘no such
thing as a set of underlying values waiting to be discovered’ in any culture. Deriving
any conclusions from a bogus notion such as political culture is, as he puts it, wholly
‘tendentious’.
Principles of justice, to Barry, are impartial because they capture a kind of equality,
which is also embodied in reason. Reasonable agreement to Barry (without all the
trappings of Rawls’ original position) can suffice for the theory. Impartial reason
does not evaluate outcomes. It is a second order impartiality which acts as a test to be
applied to moral and legal rules (Barry 1995: 194). But as Barry remarks, ‘It is...a
great mistake...to suppose that justice as impartiality is intended to constitute a
complete, self-sufficient moral system’. Justice as impartiality isnotdesigned to tell
us how to live. Rather, it addresses how we are to live together with different ideas on
how to live (Barry 1995: 77). Despite being a second order hypothetical contractarian
theory, justice as impartiality is not a view from nowhere. It is drawn (for Barry) from
the most earthy ethics imaginable (Barry 1995: 255). Justice as impartiality ‘entails
that people should not look at things from their point of view alone, but seek to
find a basis of agreement that is acceptable from all points of view’, namely putting
oneself in another’s shoes. Impartiality is, though, a bounded notion to Barry. In fact,
‘there is always some concept available that would carry the moral burden equally
well if not better’ (Barry, Brian 1989: 19). Thus, unlike Gauthier, but like Rawls,
Barry places constraints upon reason in order to control self-interest and make the
outcomes ethically appealing. Justice becomes a rational process of negotiation over
private interests, but under implicit moral constraints.
Sexual Justice
Before moving on from Rawls’ theory it is worth mentioning that a number of political
theorists have tried to both modify and extend the Rawlsian early argument on justice.
One example of this has been in the feminist critique of Rawls by Susan Moller Okin,
particularly herJustice, Gender and the Family(1989).^19 Political theory, in general, for
Okin (amongst the majority of feminists) has not taken gender with due seriousness.
She still sees Rawls’ conception of justice as universal, but inadequately adjusted to
the issue of gender. Given her adherence to Rawls’ thin universalism, convention or
culture are also considered utterly inappropriate for making judgements about justice.
Liberalism has provided a number of possible openings for feminist criticism and
argument, particularly in its social contract and natural right format. The social
contract perspective in, for example, Hobbes begins by stripping humans down to
their basic motivations, in order to build a picture of the commonwealth. The image