In my previous post, I concluded my series on the seductive but dangerous Jean-Jacques Rousseau with the following observation:

“… we are not yet done with Rousseau, not by a mile, for a major 20th century political philosopher would not only try to rehabilitate the general will and dress up Rousseau’s dangerous idea in classical liberal garb; his work now dominates the Anglo-American sphere.”

To the point, that 20th century figure is none other than John Rawls and that influential work is, of course, A Theory of Justice. (If you know, you know.) Rawls’s solution to the law-liberty dilemma is deservedly famous: he posits a hypothetical state of nature, which he calls “the original position”, where we would unanimously (!) choose not one but two high-level “principles of justice” from behind an impenetrable “veil of ignorance”: (a) equal liberty for all, and (b) a safety net for the members “the least fortunate group”, whoever they turn out to be (the so-called “difference principle”).

Although Rawls is usually classified as a “liberal” in the Enlightenment sense [1] — i.e. he is supposed to be in favor of individual liberty, not against it — and although A Theory of Justice eshews such Rousseauian terms as the “general will”, [2] in truth, however, I will argue that Rawls and Rousseau are alike in two profound ways. One is that Rawls’s definition of liberty, deep down, is really no different than Rousseau’s. The other is that Rawls’s “original position”, in form and in substance, is just Rousseau’s “general will” in disguise. Rest assured, I will begin to elaborate on both of these points in my next post.

[1] See, e.g., Leif Wenar, “John Rawls”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2025 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2025/entries/rawls/.

[2] The term “general will”, for example, makes but one appearance in The Theory of Justice, while the words “common good” appear just twice.