“Inhuman Destiny”: Naturalism, Propaganda, and Despair before Rawls's Conversion
Modern Intellectual History, 20 (3):
832-857 (2022)Abstract
This article shows that John Rawls's political thought began not with Christian faith, but with a deep, secular despair about the role of propaganda and ideology in political life. I offer the first extended discussion of Rawls's earliest paper, “Spengler's Prophecy Realized,” which argued that democracy necessarily deteriorated into plebiscitary dictatorship as the masses willingly handed power to whomever controlled the press. I argue that Rawls's earliest work mobilized currents of reactionary political thought—especially that of Oswald Spengler—which Rawls encountered at Princeton student publications. These currents reacted against the then widespread pedagogical project of rejecting “naturalism” and fostering faith in the rationality of democracy. In this light, Rawls's later wartime personalist theology appears as a reversal of perspective, affirming the possibility of a community governed not by propaganda, but by genuine interpersonal revelation. I conclude by asking where these concerns travel and settle in Rawls's mature thought.