Matthew Yglesias has posted a first draft of his senior thesis, which argues that the (later) Rawlsian attempt to “levitate” liberalism by disconnecting political morality from “comprehensive” views about ethics, metaphysics, or epistemology is plagued by internal tensions. He looks at the debate over evolution vs. creation in public schooling to make his point, arguing that Rawls’s theory requires some way of settling the question, for public purposes, of how the truth of the competing claims is to be evaluated.

My first reaction is that I’ll have to give this a close reading when I have a bit more time. My second is that this may illustrate, not a deep infirmity in Rawls’s view, but a contention that I made in my own senior philosophy thesis on Political Liberalism: to wit, that the kind of really “political” liberalism Rawls envisions is not (pace Rawls!) incompatible with libertarian theories, but positively conducive to them. That is, the broader the consensus we hope to reach among “reasonable” citizens who disagree in their comprehensive doctrines, and the more pluralistic the society we wish to structure on the basis of such an “overlapping consensus,” the more restricted the domain of government. For all two of you out there who care, I will one day actually HTML-ize and post said thesis, but I want to significantly tweak and expand certain parts, as well as incorporate some of Liam Murphy’s criticisms, before I expose myself to public ridicule by throwing it up online. My own epistemic theories give me little idea of when I’ll have time to do that.

My third, slightly unsettling reaction, is that this doesn’t really get around Matthew’s core objection. Even a government of very restricted scope will have to face these sorts of questions when it comes to deciding, e.g., what kind of evidence will be admissible in criminal proceedings. Still, while I haven’t read more than the first few pages of Matthew’s paper, I’m not sure whether this is really fatal to Rawls’s project as such—I’m inclined to think that it probably isn’t. But then, that’s just an off-the-cuff reaction, and not even a “considered conviction.” Look for a post on this later, when I’ve actually had a chance to peruse the paper I’m blathering about…