Sandel's Critique of Rawls' Deontological Doctrine

Abstract

This paper examines Sandel's critique of Rawls' deontological doctrine. Rawls'
response has led the present author to discover inconsistencies in Rawls' relation of the good and the right. These inconsistencies have led me to conclude that the self and its ends are inseparable, and that the right and the good must be viewed equally. I conclude by showing that Sandel neither accords priority to the right nor to the good, and that he is unfairly classified as a communitarian. Sandel's critique of Rawls in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice: Political liberalism depends on an overlapping consensus:
Sandel maintains that in Political Liberalism, Rawls no longer defends the Kantian conception of the person as a moral ideal. For Sandel, the political liberalism of the later Rawls seeks the support of an overlapping consensus; it no longer seeks a philosophical foundation for the principles of justice. Given that political liberalism no longer depends for its justification on the Kantian moral conception of the person, Rawls maintains that it now “aims for a political conception of justice as a freestanding view” (Rawls, 1996: 10). In this sense, Sandel maintains, political liberalism “applies the principles of toleration to philosophy itself” (Sandel, 1998a: 190)

LWATI: A Journal of Contemporary Research Vol. 5 2008: pp. 341-354