A powerful dissection of one of the fundamental problems in American governance today: the clash between presidents determined to redirect the nation through ever-tighter control of administration and an executive branch still organised to promote shared interests in steady hands, due deliberation, and expertise.
Michael Keating argues that the United Kingdom should be understood as a plurinational union in which they key issues of demos (the people), telos (the purpose of the state), ethos (values) and sovereignty have always been contested. It worked because multiple understandings could coexist. Understood this way, the United Kingdom was a good fit with the European Union, which shared these qualities. Brexit, on the other hand, was based on the need to restore the sovereignty of a unitary Parliament and people.
John Rawls (1921–2002) and his work are now squarely a subject for history. In the more than fifteen years since his death, a rich body of scholarship has emerged which attempts, in different ways, to understand the nature, development, and impact of Rawls's thought from a variety of historical perspectives. With 2021 marking fifty years since A Theory of Justice (1971) was first published, this special forum examines what we here call the “historical Rawls.”
This article explores Rawls's evolving orientation to “the tradition of political philosophy” over the course of his academic career, culminating in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001). Drawing on archival material, it argues that Rawls's fascination with tradition arose out of his own pedagogical engagement with the debate around the “death of political philosophy” in the 1950s.