John Tomasi - Book Review

Book Review

Tomasi, John. Liberalism beyond Justice: Citizens, Society, and the Boundaries of Political Theory.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. xviii+163. $55.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper).

This book scratches where political liberalism might well itch most: its understanding of the way in which the requirements of good citizenship connect with the comprehensive ideas about the good life of citizens of pluralistic societies. It is the first book from squarely within the tradition of political liberalism that does not evade the more tricky ethical aspects of this question. John Tomasi argues that it makes no sense to theorize about the justificatory structure of liberalism without asking what its intended and its unintended effects will be on the ethical outlooks of citizens. Furthermore, and this is perhaps his greatest achievement, Tomasi makes it clear that taking these issues seriously is not just a matter of filling in the last remaining blank spots of the otherwise complete map of political liberalism but rather a matter of redrawing the entire map.

Tomasi starts from the standard criticism of political liberalism we know from communitarianism. A just and reasonable basic structure of society is not enough to make citizens feel at home in society. In order to feel at home, citizens are in need of social ties and personal narratives that help them flourish both as members of a shared civic culture and as members of more local ethical communities and cultures. Citizens have to know each other and themselves as more or less successfully individuated personsnot just as moral subjects with a sense of justicebefore they can learn to relate to the demands of just and well-designed institutions. For that reason, every complete political theory is in need of an account of the interconnection between the right and the good that goes beyond justice (hence the title).

Political liberals, Tomasi notes, have ducked this criticism by claiming that it does not really concern them. John Rawls, for instance, is well known for claiming that his aim is to develop a theory about the formal justificatory structure of liberalism only, not about the formal, let alone the substantive, requirements of individual and social well-being within liberal societies. According to Tomasi, this is exactly where political liberalism goes wrong. The main aim of his book is to show that political liberalism can take seriously such questions without abandoning its core idea of defending liberalism as a political, not as a comprehensive, ethical doctrine.

Tomasi has a remarkable talent for building his argument around notions that stick to mind. In this book, the most important ones are "the liberal proviso," "liberal nonpublic reason," and, most important, the "compass concepts" by which citizens steer through life in liberal society. The liberal proviso, which Tomasi adapts from Rawls, states that a liberal regime will remain neutral on questions of ethical excellence, "provided only that [citizens] [1] acknowledge the principles of the political conception of justice and [2] appreciate [the liberal regime's] political ideals of person and society" (p. 13, quoting John Rawls, Political Liberalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1993], p. 200).

Tomasi's most gripping argument begins where he claims that political liberals will only begin to understand the implications of this proviso if they investigate the forms of liberal nonpublic reason by means of which citizens actually meet the proviso. They will have to do this by investigating the distinctive ways in which the requirements of political liberalism's public vocabulary "interface" with the more comprehensive ethical outlooks of citizens: "Within the liberal social world, each citizen's particular understanding about the meaning of his public autonomy is conceptually distinct from his simple understanding that he is politically autonomous. ... Liberal citizens routinely have need of supplementary concepts of a different sort, dispositional concepts, by which each understands what his political autonomy means" (p. 45).

Being politically autonomous means that one knows "the variety and character of the rights one has" (p. 45). And the dispositional concepts by which one understands what it means to be politically autonomous Tomasi labels "compass concepts." At first sight, these resemble what Rawls calls "reasonable political conceptions of justice." However, Tomasi's compass concepts do much more work than Rawls's political conceptions. Not only do they enable citizens to share in an overlapping consensus about the basic requirements of justice; they also enable them to determine for themselves which social issues they think are to be settled by an appeal to the liberal state's standards of justice and which issues can be settled by appeals to more private virtues such as benevolence and forgiveness. Compass concepts make it possible for citizens to engage in a "conscious reflection" on their status as politically autonomous (p. 51) and to recognize public values without losing touch with their own moral motivations.

I said earlier that Tomasi redraws the entire map of political liberalism. He does so by being very explicit about the implications of political liberalism's generous hospitality toward a wide range of conceptions of the good. First, he convincingly shows that political liberalism truly is more hospitable to ethical pluralism than liberal perfectionism is (something I did not accept before reading his book). Subsequently, he makes it perfectly clear which price the doctrine pays for this. Most remarkable, Tomasi bites the bullet that the rejection of liberal perfectionism may well imply that political liberalism should be more hospitable to "compassionate conservatism"a compass concept guided by the virtue of benevolencethan it should be to progressive liberal views that reduce most social issues to questions of justice that are best handled by the state (p. 127). If one wants to argue that there is liberalism beyond justice, then it is only fair to be hospitable to those who try to be good citizens while keeping their distance from the liberal state. Of course, many political liberals will want to contest this conclusion. I predict that for quite a few of them, fighting Tomasi's views will result in a conversion to comprehensive liberalism. For Tomasi shows us a truth about political liberalism that many of its adherents do not want to face, that is, that because of its ethical agnosticism, it is in many ways more conservative and less radical than comprehensive liberalism is.

Toward the end of his book, Tomasi turns to practical questions of citizenship and civic education. Here, we encounter a good explanation of why it would be chimerical to assume that the demands of public and nonpublic reason should in principle be in harmony. Indeed, "for most people, good citizenship involves the difficult ongoing matter of maintaining an equipoise between one's standing as politically autonomous and the various compass concept traditions with which one identifies" (p. 75). To the liberal perfectionist, political liberalism may not be liberal enough; to the compassionate conservative, it may be too liberal. They both will have to find their own ways of relating to the political doctrine in which they share. From this insight, Tomasi draws the conclusion that there is no sense in drawing up lists of "liberal virtues" and offering recipes for their ideal exercise. In a pluralist society, there is no privileged and ideal way of exercising civic virtue. This insight is central to Tomasi's subsequent reflections on civic education.

Every good book has its weaknesses, and this one is no exception. Most important, Tomasi's account of citizenship is regrettably apolitical in nature. He largely thinks of citizenship not as a political but as a social practice that takes place within the boundaries of a given, (nearly) just, basic structure of rights and procedures. Political liberals hardly ever seriously reflect on the kind of politics that begins when some citizens start claiming that some of the rights and procedures in their society should be revised. Tomasi is no exception. For an author who aims to investigate the consequences of ethical diversity for political thought, this is disappointing.

A related issue is Tomasi's peculiar understanding of the political theorist's relation to the practices he is studying. The theorist's task seems to be to explain to citizens the limits and scope of the given structure of political liberalism. Theorists should take "the fullest possible range of their citizens' questions" seriously (p. 33; emphasis added). Political theorists should answer the "eudaimonistic concerns of their citizenry" (p. 39; emphasis added). Are political liberals Philosopher Kings? They may have abandoned "the philosophical hope of producing uniformity of opinion about the nature of (nonpublic) moral personality" (p. 87), but why should their account of public moral personality and political justice be considered to be uncontested? Just as the engagement in political theory, political activity is hardly ever confronted with firm boundaries. It is rather about contesting, reinterpreting, and redrawing the boundaries of a common activity. As an unruly member of the community of political liberals, Tomasi excels at such activities. It is a pity that he has not translated that experience into a more political understanding of political liberalism.

Bert van den Brink
Utrecht University

Ethics: An International Journal of Social Political and Legal Philosophy. Volume 112 July 2002 Number 4. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu