That's not what Rawls is arguing. If you, GP, or anyone disagrees, I'd be happy to discuss philosophy in earnest.
Rawls developed a lot of his ideas as critiques of political philosophy in his time. One such school was the liberal tradition, works by authors such as Locke, Mills, and Kant, that argued that ensuring individual rights and happiness was the most important aspect of political society. Another school was the dialectical materialist school by authors such as Marx, Althusser, and Gramsci which argued that political society's goal should be to dissolve structural inequalities which arise from material conditions.
Rawls wanted to strike a middle ground between the two schools and acknowledge both materialist concerns and the need for individuals' rights. A key part of unifying these notions was to offer the idea of self-respect, that ensuring the key role of political institutions should be to maximize the self-respect of the individual not necessarily their rights or their autonomy. Self-respect is a lens that exists for social and political institutions to target, not an extant property of individuals themselves, they exist together [1]. The existence of state institutions is justified as tools to maximize self-respect and justice. As expected philosophers from both camps criticized Rawls's work, libertarians asserting that self-respect led to instances of infringements of rights and dialectical materialists claiming that Rawls's ideas would uphold bourgeoise inequality the same way democratic societies do now.
It's a problem I find with these sorts of discussions online. People use quotes from political philosophers to lend credence to their ideas without considering the totality of the philosopher's ideas. You can't reduce a philosopher into a pithy quote or tweet.
[1]: If you recognize Lacanian discourse, then you can view equity institutions as the Other with the messy bits of individuality and self-respect shaking out as the Real.
I'm well aware of Rawls' broader position, and I in fact hold an MA in phil with a concentration on Rawls.
Nothing you have said seems to interact with what I've said, other than to suggest, erroneously, that understanding was lacking.
Rawls does indeed suggest that "a key role of political institutions should be to maximize the self-respect of the individual", as you perfectly put it.
We are about to lose the sociopolitical institution that undergirds a huge amount of individual self-respect, namely, economic merit. If we had good sense, we'd stop right here.
(Anticipating the obvious: yes, the market for talent is a sociopolitical institution; if you need more on this, I'm happy to keep talking.)
Speaking of philosophical principles, I'm a big fan of 'the Principle of Charity' -- that one make an effort to parse text in a way that attributes as much wisdom and thoughtfulness to the interlocutor as possible. These days, it's often called 'giving a steelman' of your opponent (a riff on straw man, I would suppose.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
Regardless of what you prefer to call it: Might I suggest that you re-invest in the Principle of Charity? It would make our conversation more interesting. (This is its usual function.)
You claim that shouting must happen because there's a conflict: the idea of individual self-respect (in one's economic value or merit) is eroding while liberal democratic institutions are incapable of dealing with change. This seems deeply contradictory. The Rawlsian reason why liberal democratic institutions exist is to safeguard the idea of individual self-respect. If we find ourselves shouting due to a lack of belief in liberal democratic institutions then the idea that a system even exists to ensure individual self-respect is contradictory. Liberal democracy has either failed and we lay with another form of our old friend the Leviathan or it hasn't and we must uphold its institutions and ensure individual rights and justice.
I want to emphasize that I feel that liberal democratic societies have deep obligations to ensure some economic stability for their citizens as well. (I draw a lot of inspiration from Rawls though I don't agree with him on everything.) I'm personally a fan of UBI here, but there are alternate proposals which ensure some form of economic dignity for members of liberal democratic societies. But shouting and raging and rejecting democratic institutions is not the way.
> We are about to lose the sociopolitical institution that undergirds a huge amount of individual self-respect, namely, economic merit. If we had good sense, we'd stop right here.
Forgive me in remarking that this sounds remarkably Burkean.
> Anticipating the obvious: yes, the market for talent is a sociopolitical institution; if you need more on this, I'm happy to keep talking.
Indeed, I'd love to see more on this. A Marxist might claim that the idea of economic merit and talent is but a facet of bourgeois society and a post-structuralist that the idea that one is owed economic merit at all is but a construction.
> Regardless of what you prefer to call it: Might I suggest that you re-invest in the Principle of Charity? It would make our conversation more interesting. (This is its usual function.)
Forgive me if I made assumptions, and I believe my tone came across as more combative than it was meant to be. But when you gesture at popular culture's disdain for techies as some form of proof of our sins, you make it difficult to take the argument seriously. Moreover my reply was meant more for whom I replied to rather than to you directly. You can accuse me of speaking "toward the audience" which I will admit is a bad habit of mine. But I've seen enough poorly understood "Paradox of Tolerance" and "Your fists' rights end where my face begins" shares on the internet that I don't always approach these conversations with the best of faith.
> Forgive me if I made assumptions. But when you gesture at popular culture's disdain for techies as some form of proof of our sins, you make it difficult to take the argument seriously.
They weren't assumptions; they were careless reading. Don't do that again. And yes, popular culture -- art -- matters, and depictions (representations) that have currency also matter. If this makes it hard for you to take me seriously, as you say, then you seem to have entered this conversation with a view that culture is irrelevant to begin with, so why are we arguing about culture?
> Indeed, I'd love to see more on this. A Marxist might claim that the idea of economic merit and talent is but a facet of bourgeois society and a post-structuralist that the idea that one is owed economic merit at all is but a construction.
I'm no Marxist and I'm no post-structuralist. I have no opinion on what constitutes 'merit' in the absolute sense, but I observe that rapidly converting our current order to a new one, where cognition is cheap and provided by LLMs produced by large, central organizations, is probably not going to go well, mostly because, as a practical matter, people's self-respect is depends on their role in the economic order. Maybe that can change, but not easily, and not soon, and probably not in time.
> Forgive me in remarking that this sounds remarkably Burkean.
Again, loose reading. I am not claiming that actual merit (how much a human being is worth) has some connection to their economic output. I observe, as a matter of fact, that, in modern western democracies, we act as if this is the case; suddenly changing the rules of the game will have enormous consequences, many of them likely dangerous.
> You claim that shouting must happen because there's a conflict: the idea of individual self-respect (in one's economic value or merit) is eroding while liberal democratic institutions are incapable of dealing with change. This seems deeply contradictory.
I claim the shouting will happen because shouting is a natural human reaction to having one's sense of self-worth upended. And modern liberal democratic institutions are not likely to be able to handle this, yes, because they are sclerotic and polarized.
This is not contradictory; this is 2023.
And yes, a Leviathan moment is precisely what I fear might be coming: a liberal democratic capitalist order that fails over into some form of autocracy or another.
Ah, no, I don't really want to discuss philosophy in earnest. Many people I consider friends are struggling to find a place in the world where they're valued in a way that makes them a living, and I don't think this conversation will help them. Good day.
Rawls developed a lot of his ideas as critiques of political philosophy in his time. One such school was the liberal tradition, works by authors such as Locke, Mills, and Kant, that argued that ensuring individual rights and happiness was the most important aspect of political society. Another school was the dialectical materialist school by authors such as Marx, Althusser, and Gramsci which argued that political society's goal should be to dissolve structural inequalities which arise from material conditions.
Rawls wanted to strike a middle ground between the two schools and acknowledge both materialist concerns and the need for individuals' rights. A key part of unifying these notions was to offer the idea of self-respect, that ensuring the key role of political institutions should be to maximize the self-respect of the individual not necessarily their rights or their autonomy. Self-respect is a lens that exists for social and political institutions to target, not an extant property of individuals themselves, they exist together [1]. The existence of state institutions is justified as tools to maximize self-respect and justice. As expected philosophers from both camps criticized Rawls's work, libertarians asserting that self-respect led to instances of infringements of rights and dialectical materialists claiming that Rawls's ideas would uphold bourgeoise inequality the same way democratic societies do now.
It's a problem I find with these sorts of discussions online. People use quotes from political philosophers to lend credence to their ideas without considering the totality of the philosopher's ideas. You can't reduce a philosopher into a pithy quote or tweet.
[1]: If you recognize Lacanian discourse, then you can view equity institutions as the Other with the messy bits of individuality and self-respect shaking out as the Real.