place. Again it is because there seems to be no need to explainwhypeople
prefer to buy cheaper goods that rational choice theory works in economics.
Rawls
John Rawls (b. 1921), a Harvard professor of philosophy, is without doubt one
of the very few creative and influential writers of political theory in the
contemporary West. His most important work,A Theory of Justice, published
in 1971, was a major attack on the prevailingutilitarianismof theories of
political obligationand social order, and constituted a brilliant attempt to
revivify thesocial contractapproach to political and social theory. His work
started a rethinking of accepted positions in many related subjects, especially
jurisprudence, where legal philosophers have followed him in attacking the
positive lawtheories which were the legal counterpart of utilitarianism. The
essential points of Rawls’ work are twofold. He wants to re-establish the pre-
eminence ofnatural rightsarguments, so that there will be some values we
hold as absolute, principally the right to liberty, and secondly, but only
secondly, a right to equality. He also wishes to change the methodology from
the sort of cost-accounting approach held dear by utilitarians, to a more
absolute form of argument. In pursuit of the latter he relies heavily on what
he calls the ‘justice as fairness’ argument. One technique for making these
points is the ‘veil of ignorance’. Essentially this calls on us to try to pretend that
we do not know certain basic social facts about ourselves. Thus we are to
imagine a person who is ignorant of his sex, age, class or period of history.
What social institutions would such a person think were fair? The point is that
if you do not know whether you are to be a slave or ruler, man or woman,
living in the 10th or 20th century, you could not opt for ‘unfair’ rules, lest you
ended up on the wrong side of the bargain. Once stated, it is a very simple test
of whether an institution is ‘fair’ or not, but no one before Rawls had thought
of this way of modernizing the traditional social contract methodology. Rawls
has reinstated a particular form of liberal political theory and, whether it lasts or
not, he is one of the very few creative and original contemporary thinkers in
the field.
Reactionary
Reactionary is one of those political terms invariably used pejoratively, though
there is nothing in its basic meaning that requires this. A reactionary is, literally,
one who reacts against some development or change, or opposes some
proposed change in society. It is normally used in association with, or almost
in place of,conservatism, though it is highly relative. Thus propaganda inside
communist societies often refers to ‘reactionary’ forces, those who are holding
Rawls