This paper presents a critique of American liberal capitalism, a system that began as a mere experiment but has now become the only form of life that isbroadly recognized as legitimate. Such legitimation is sustained by the seemingly objective and transcendent authority of a consensus that, as a matter of fact, isincapable of self-critique and judgment. For in liberal capitalism, the quest for happiness is measured primarily by the successes of free enterprise and the freemarket in general. These successes have thus become the only legitimate sources of individual and collective action. But in spite of such successes, liberal capitalism does nothing about the actual unjust relations between different social classes and between different countries. In order to address this unjust situation, liberal capitalism rightly searches for a theory of justice that can provide genuine selfjustification or self-legitimation. But capitalist culture has wrongly found such self-justification in the liberal theory of Rawls, whose veil of ignorance ends up legitimating capitalism’s own “worst of all possible situations.”

In this paper I argue that the right to equal respect and consideration that Rawls incorporates into the original position by means of the veil of ignorance cannot provide support for his two principles of justice independently of an appeal to considered judgments. The trouble is that this right is intolerably vague. The crucial terms are neither transparent in meaning nor clearly definable, and so they can only be understood against a background of considered judgments. To the extent that the principle is kept vague, it places no constraints on the conditions of the original position. To the extent that its meaning is specified, its interpretation presupposes the very principles and considered judgments that are supposed to be independently justified by the device of the original position. Finally, I respond to Norm Daniels’s claim that “wide reflective equilibrium” provides a way to test moral principles independently of their respective considered judgments.

I argue in this paper that Rawls is unable to offer a ground for the normativity of his freestanding politics, where his account is susceptible to a number of criticisms he raises against Hobbes. Rawls identifies three problems in Hobbes’s political view: the absence of reasonableness, the lack of a social role for morality, and finally resorting to an absolute sovereign to maintain stability. I maintain that Rawls’s Kantian account circumvents these problems. However, I argue that his move to a freestanding politics that disposes of the Kantian moral basis is unable to justify normative commitments and ultimately resorts to contingent justifications resulting from uncritically accepting norms institutions inculcate.

Orestes Brownson is regarded as one of the most important contributors to Catholic social thought that the United States has ever produced. Although he is famous for changing his views during the course of his intellectual career, he in fact consistently defended several core principles. His defense of community and social obligation never wavered. He called for greater social equality as a young socialist and Transcendentalist; as a mature Catholic he urged his readers to take seriously Jesus’s command that they love one another. Although Brownson wrote in the nineteenth century, his views remain relevant in the second decade of the twenty-first century. His work challenges the narcissism, individualism, and selfishness that plague our world today. In contrast to our culture’s tendency to focus on the individual, Brownson calls for us to think about our communities. He asks us to rise above our sinful natures.