Both Rawls and Hegel understand individual freedom as rational self-determination. Based on that understanding, the requirement that the social world realize freedom breaks down into two parts. Society's major social institutions must protect and enable the individual freedom of citizens (objective freedom) and citizens must affirm these institutions as their own and act from that affirmation (subjective freedom).
Given these preliminaries, the dissertation first summarizes the conceptions of objective and subjective freedom of each author. Second, the dissertation shows that Rawls views his and Hegel's commitment to an objectively and subjectively free social world as marking them out as liberal thinkers.
Third, the dissertation argues that Rawls implicitly formulates an immanent critique of the very liberal theory that he proposes. The immanent critique states that a liberal social world that realizes objective freedom will not realize subjective freedom. The problem is sociological and psychological in origin. First of all, the dissertation argues, an objectively free social world is necessarily one that is differentiated. Second, reflective citizens who occupy different parts may reject the logic of one part in favor of the logic of another. Here they fall prey to a general cognitive error, that of failing to understand how two different entities in fact belong to a single whole. Victim to this error, reflective citizens no longer affirm the major institutions of the objectively free social world. The subjective freedom of the social world is then compromised.
The dissertation finds this critique in Rawls's political theory and shows its debts to
Hegel. Then it reconstructs Rawls's defense. The reflective individual, aided by
educating institutions, can master the theory that explains how the different aspects of the
ideal social world contribute to its goal as a whole. The dissertation shows that this
solution is modeled on a creative adaptation of Hegel's notion of reconciliation through
philosophy. Finally, it demonstrates that Rawls's defended liberalism of freedom is
superior to Hegel's along two dimensions: it is more individualistic and it is more
egalitarian.
Writing Sample: Dissertation, Chapter Three