The ideal of the autonomous individual, conceived in a thought experiment, serves as the centerpiece of the political theory of John Rawls, the dean of twentieth-century liberal thought. According to Rawls, the “original position of equality corresponds to the state of nature in the traditional theory of the social contract.” This original position is “purely hypothetical” and as such any rational creature can enter into it by an act of imagination. The original position consists of a “veil of ignorance” whereby “no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like.” In this original position behind the veil of ignorance, everyone is perfectly equal, rational, and free to choose. Rawls is convinced that in such a condition, certain principles of justice would invariably be chosen if people merely acted in a rational and disinterested manner. Rawls calls this justice as fairness. The crucial point for us is Rawls’ notion that it is possible to strip away all the particularity from a person—the particularities of history, culture, relationship, and temperament not to mention human nature—and retain a core identity capable of rational will. Reason in this conception is autonomous and the essence of human identity is the capacity to will in accord with reason. While Rawls provides a novel reconception of the state of nature, he is, by his own admission, engaging in a line of reflection about politics and the human person that extends back into the seventeenth-century.
According to Pierre Manent, Hobbes should be considered the founder of liberalism, for he begins his theoretical reflections with the atomistic individual and roots his account of sovereignty in consent. Hobbes showed how individualism could lead to absolutism, but perhaps due to his relentless consistency, he did not find a ready following. Locke, however, is often seen as a moderate. He followed Hobbes in theoretical terms by beginning with autonomous individuals in a state of nature. At the same time, unlike Hobbes he continued to affirm a more or less traditional view of society and morality. He speaks—albeit cursorily—in terms of natural law, which at least seems to suggest a fidelity to a tradition of moral reasoning that traces its roots back to the Medieval scholastics and beyond them to Cicero and in some fashion to Aristotle. Nevertheless, in following Hobbes, Locke rejects any notion that political society is the natural state of human affairs. Instead he begins his reflections on politics with a state of nature in which each free and equal individual is subject to nothing other than the law of nature. Due to the inherent dangers in such a state to life, liberty, and property, these free individuals contract with each other to form society for the purpose of security. In so doing they cede a portion of their rights (the right to punish offenders) to the established authorities. This contract is legitimate because of the consent granted—either explicitly or tacitly—by each individual party to the contract. For Locke, the only reasonable standard for subsequent legislation is the majoritarian principle: “And thus every man, by consenting with others to make one body politic under one government, puts himself under an obligation, to every one of that society, to submit to the determination of the majority.”
Such concepts seem quintessentially American given the Lockean flavor of the Declaration of Independence. We almost instinctively think in terms of consent of the governed; of free and equal individuals; of the rights to life, liberty, and property; and of the legitimacy of majoritarian rule. At the same time, Americans tend to be skeptical of tradition, which carries with it the musty odor of the past. Instead, we tend to be a future oriented people, boldly striving to ensure that tomorrow will be better than yesterday and optimistic that through hard work (and perhaps good fortune) brighter days will always be ahead. When Ronald Reagan declared that it was morning in America, he was tapping into that future-oriented sentiment. America has always been the land of perpetual dawn. There is, of course, a countervailing wind of pessimism that emerges periodically; however, it is not animated by any inclination to rediscover the wisdom of the past or to submit to limits manifest in that wisdom. Instead, it is a pessimism about the future, which still provides no positive orientation to the past except, perhaps, a whiff of nostalgia.
The Lockean framework around which our political institutions are ostensibly built, however, may not be as stable as we imagine. What, for instance, prevents the majority from oppressing a minority? Clearly, if there is no limit to the will of the majority, gross injustices are only a matter of time. If Locke’s “state of nature has a law of nature to govern it” and if that law of nature is “as intelligible and plain to a rational creature, and a studier of that law, as the positive laws of the commonwealth” and if that law of nature continues in force even after the social contract is initiated, then the majority is checked, at least theoretically. But what becomes of justice if this law of nature is ignored or denied? It would appear that the social contract could, in fact, become a means of oppression rather than liberation, for in practical terms power is amplified as individuals join forces and woe to those who run afoul of the majority.
(excerpted from introduction)
