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An Overlapping Consensus: A Critique of Two Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Michael G. Barnhart
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Abstract

This essay examines various intellectual challenges posed by John Rawls's conception of an overlapping consensus, both in terms of his own approach and also that of Charles Taylor. Two questions are entertained: (1) whether various criticisms of Rawls's view are indeed justified and (2) if they are, whether Taylor puts them to rest. Though the latter question is answered somewhat in the negative, Taylor's version of overlapping consensus is interestingly different from that of Rawls in that Taylor introduces an important distinction between a tradition on the one hand and what Rawls terms a “comprehensive doctrine” on the other. The advantage of this distinction, among other things, is that it clarifies what is at stake in moving to any sort of overlapping consensus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , Spring 2004 , pp. 257 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2004

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References

1. See Rawls's, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, especially “Lecture IV: The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” pp. 133–72.Google Scholar

2. This point is made repeatedly in discussions of the issue. See Bauer, Joanne R. and Bell, Daniel A., eds., The East Asian Challenge for Human Rights (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. as well as Bell, Lynda S., Nathan, Andrew J., and Peleg, Ilan, eds., Negotiating Culture and Human Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. This is, for example, a consistent theme in Paz's, Octavio, In Light of India (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995)Google Scholar, recording his lifelong experiences of India and its culture as a Mexican diplomat.

4. See, for example, Hoffman, Eva, Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (New York: Penguin Books, 1989).Google Scholar

5. See Charles Taylor, “Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights,” in Bauer, and Bell, , East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, pp. 124–44.Google Scholar

6. When quoting from Rawls's Political Liberalism, I will simply indicate the page numbers in question.

7. See Rawls's, introduction to Political Liberalism, pp. xxi–xxvi.Google Scholar

8. As will become obvious, I am referring to Margolis's, Joseph discussion in Life Without Principles: Reconciling Theory and Practice (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1996).Google Scholar

9. To some extent this is an interpretation of the Kantian priority Rawls places on the person as a “free and equal rational being” at liberty to choose ends and which Rawls believes that the original position embodies. See pp. 251–57 of A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971)Google Scholar and Sandel's, Michael response in chaps. 3 and 4 of Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).Google Scholar

10. This is a consistent theme in Inglehart's, RonaldModernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

11. This theme is very prominent in Fadiman, Anne, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997)Google Scholar which is an account of a tragic collision of cultures that occurred as well-meaning American doctors attempted to treat a Hmong child for epilepsy. One consistent pattern that emerges in this story concerns how the more youthful Hmong must interact with the institutions of the host society, particularly hospitals and American doctors, before full majority in their own, mainly because of their familiarity with English and the customs of American society. As a result, they must assume positions of authority within their families without having passed through the traditional stages of leadership preparation. This tends to undermine traditional patterns of authority and disrupt the transmission of the culture from older, authoritative adults to the young. Also, since what these young people are translating and attempting to enforce are doctors' and hospitals' orders to their patients, orders that directly contradict Hmong folk medicine, the young are given ample motivation to skeptically question some of their elders' deepest beliefs about the nature of the body and its place in nature.

12. Lee Kuan Yew's views have been widely reported. See especially Zakaria, Fareed, “Culture is Destiny: A Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 1994), pp. 109–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Bell, Daniel A., East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 173–276.Google Scholar

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18. See Walzer, , Thick and Thin, chap. 1.Google Scholar

19. In Bauer, and Bell, , East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, pp. 124–44.Google Scholar

20. Taylor, , “Conditions of an Unforced Consensus,” p. 124.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 127.

22. Ibid., p. 133. See also discussions in Queen, Christopher S. and King's, Sallie B. collection Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996).Google Scholar

23. There is a wealth of material on emptiness or sunyata. For a philosophically sophisticated interpretation, congenial to the use to which engaged Buddhism puts the concept, see Garfield, Jay L., Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

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25. Ibid., p. 137.

26. Ibid., p. 133.

27. See note 9.

28. An-Na'im, Addullahi A., “The Cultural Mediation of Human Rights: The Al-Arqam Case in Malaysia” in Bauer, and Bell, , East Asian Challenge for Human Rights, pp. 147–68.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., p. 166.

30. Ibid., p. 168.

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32. Ibid., pp. 91, 161, and 185–200.

33. For what a Buddhist liberalism might mean for bioethical issues, see my chapter “In Extremis: Abortion and Assisted Suicide from a Buddhist perspective,” Varieties of Ethical Reflection: New Directions for Ethics in a Global Perspective, ed. Barnhart, Michael (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), pp. 283–316.Google Scholar

34. I want to emphasize that I am not excluding the possibility that different fundamentalist comprehensive doctrines might achieve a modus vivendi with others of whom they disapprove. But as Rawls points out, this is not political consensus in any strong sense.

35. For an interesting and very recent example of how an Islamic liberal reformer might proceed see The New York Times' recent profile of the Canadian critic and commentator Irshad Manji. Krauss, Clifford, “The Saturday Profile: An Unlikely Promoter of an Islamic Reformation,” The New York Times, 10 4, 2003, A4.Google Scholar