Liberal Justice and Particular Identity: Cavell, Emerson, Rawls

TLDR: In the liberal tradition, justice and identity appear both difficult to relate and inextricably intertwined as mentioned in this paper, which makes it difficult for people to relate to each other in a practical way.

Abstract: F the liberal tradition , justice and identity appear both difficult to relate and inextricably intertwined. After years of contestatory identity politics, liberalism still proffers Americans a paradoxical national ideology that construes these terms as mutually exclusive. Identity, prejudice, and discrimination stand opposed to universality, equity, and freedom. Liberalism’s central tenet, reaffirmed from Locke through Kant, to Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Rawls, holds that justice dissolves all particularities before a universally shared and immanent lawfulness. Even Emerson’s most ethereal affirmations rhyme with liberalism’s core beliefs. “Within man,” as he wrote in “The Over-Soul,” is “the soul of the whole” (386). Emerson’s affirmation that each particular individual participates in the “transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest law” may express a religious sentiment, but a similar belief in lawful and impersonal universality also grounds liberal ideals of secular justice. Emerson’s identification with such beliefs makes him, as Stanley Cavell and others have affirmed, a founding figure of American thought. Moreover, these beliefs have a practical aspect. Emerson himself, only a few years after “The Over-Soul” appeared in print, took the stage to speak out against the injustices of slavery. His long participation in the abolitionist movement stands as an immanent expression of his transcendentalist ideals applied to particular problems of justice.1 Of course, the history of the modern world generally and the history of the United States particularly make clear that difficulties attend the practical achievement of liberal universalism however possible