John Rawls (Philosophy)

Distributive justice assumes a morally critical judgment of nature, which typically contradicts providential conceptions. Hence, simple conceptions of divine Providence cannot support distributive justice. This essay analyzes and develops a complex strand of theorizing about Providence within Jewish philosophy that is compatible with distributive justice. According to this conception, the actions of divine Providence express different and mutually exclusive considerations of justice. Therefore, the moral value of outcomes is intransitive between the situations of different people. And while each providential action is justified from an ethical perspective, the total outcome is distinct from God's ultimate desire. Human ethics responds to this disparity by redistribution. This conception of Providence also contributes to the additional issue of inter-generational justice through the concomitant idea of life missions. The classical rendering of missions creates problems, however, for distributive justice. I conclude by formulating a conception of life missions that is compatible with both distributive and intergenerational justice.

Στην παρούσα εργασία  ο προβληματισμός μας εστιάζεται στην έννοια του κλασικού φιλελευθερισμού. Το ζήτημα που καλούμαστε να αναλύσουμε είναι εάν, και κατά πόσο  οι θεωρήσεις δυο φιλόσοφων του τέλους του 20ου αιώνα, του Ρωλς και του Νόζικ, προσιδιάζουν στις θέσεις του κλασικού φιλελευθερισμού.  Η προσπάθεια μας θα εστιαστεί στην αποτίμηση των θέσεων τόσο του ενός όσο και του άλλου, με στόχο να καταλήξουμε στο ποιος εκ των δυο προσεγγίζει περισσότερο την έννοια του κλασσικού φιλελευθερισμού. Για το λόγο αυτό αρχικά θα αναλύσουμε τις θέσεις του κλασικού φιλελευθερισμού, τις οποίες και θα χρησιμοποιήσουμε ως μέτρο σύγκρισης, έτσι ώστε να εντοπίσουμε ομοιότητες – ή διαφορές- στις θέσεις των ανωτέρω φιλοσόφων, τις οποίες θα αναλύουμε εκ παραλλήλου.

Citizens are politically autonomous insofar as they are subject to laws that are (a) justified by reasons acceptable to them and (b) authorized by them via their political institutions. An obstacle to the equal realization of political autonomy is the plurality of religious, moral, and philosophical views endorsed by citizens. Decisions regarding certain fundamental political issues (e.g., abortion) can involve citizens imposing political positions justified in terms of their respective worldviews upon others. Despite citizens' disagreements over which worldview is correct, 'political liberalism' claims that there is a form of political autonomy that is realizable within pluralist societies. (Political liberalism differs from 'comprehensive liberalism' by, inter alia, being 'freestanding' vis-à-vis citizens' different worldviews.) Citizens can be politically autonomous if they enjoy equal political power and justify its exercise with 'public reasons.' A political liberal education would aim at ensuring that all students can become politically autonomous citizens by teaching them how to exercise their democratic rights effectively and how to engage in public reasoning. Some political and educational theorists, however, argue that teaching students how to be politically autonomous amounts to teaching them how to be 'comprehensively' autonomous. If this is so, then the distinction between political liberalism and comprehensive liberalism collapses, at least with respect to education. This chapter outlines the main elements of political liberalism, summarizes the main requirements of a political liberal citizenship education, and surveys three arguments in support of and against the thesis that a political liberal education amounts to an education for comprehensive autonomy.

The ethical values and behaviors are not only abstract terms, but they are refined and conceptualized by real life experiences. The societal context where the actions of humans can be analyzed by ethical decision-making is entirely relevant to deliberate on what is the right thing to do, and what the moral agent should do, since the ethical values and principles response to the actual practices of life and to the needs of humans in the society. This elaboration takes us to the realm of social ethics.
This article reviews the definition and contextual meaning of social ethics at a broader level by giving special emphasis to the ethical theories and principles, focusing on the societal and public setting. Ethics will be deliberated with social and community aspects. Based on the principle of justice and public health ethics, the concept of social ethics has been investigated concisely through the relationship between man, as a moral person, and the society in exemplification of the issues of healthcare ethics. It is argued that the tension between individualism and communitarian needs can be reconciled with the perspective of social ethics by respecting the individual autonomy without disregarding the common good and social justice. By promoting the values of social responsibility, solidarity, social utility, social ethics has been proposed as the basis of a rational, moral, egalitarian, pluralistic, democratic society rising on the pillars of human rights and human dignity.

Keywords
Ethics, ethical theories, ethical principles, beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, justice, common good, distributive justice, equality, individual freedom, public health ethics, public reason, social rights, social utility, solidarity, social responsibility.

This article aims to trace back some of the theoretical foundations of medical ethics that stem from the philosophies of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls. The four philosophers had in mind rational and autonomous human beings who are able to decide their destiny, who pave for themselves the path for their own happiness. It is argued that their philosophies have influenced the field of medical ethics as they crafted some very important principles of the field. I discuss the concept of autonomy according to Kant and JS Mill, Kant's concepts of dignity, benevolence and beneficence, Mill's Harm Principle (nonmaleficence), the concept of justice according to Aristotle, Mill and Rawls, and Aristotle's concept of responsibility.

Religious freedom, and the status of religion in the public square, is presently a matter of worldwide debate. However, it is necessary to clarify the terms of the debate. This dissertation will offer a challenging invitation to deepen our understanding of the fundamental meaning of religious freedom by analyzing and challenging the notions of "religion," "freedom," and the "public square" as they have been commonly employed in discussions related to religious freedom and the place of religion in the public square in the works of Richard John Neuhaus, John Rawls, Robert Audi, José Casanovas, Jürgen Habermas, and Charles Taylor. It will also challenge the notion of "religious freedom" employed by international and legal documents, and in the work of David Schlinder, John Courtney Murray, and Martha Nussbaum. Following the work of Rainer Forst, it will also show why religious freedom should not be understood as "tolerance."
The goal of the book, then, is to provide a more effective way of dealing with issues of religious freedom and the place of religion in the public square. My investigation will be centered on Thomas Aquinas' notion of religion as a moral virtue, and Hanna Arendt's notion of political freedom. The novelty of this investigation will be in that the virtue of religion will be analyzed in connection to the proper place for the performance of its acts, namely, the private or the public sphere. The book will also show how Aquinas' notion of religion and its deviations (vices) offers a valuable guideline insofar as the public is concerned.
As a consequence, a new meaning will be offered on the notion of religious freedom, based on Aquinas' view of religion as virtue, and Arendt's notion of political freedom as a stage for virtue, which will help clarify the debate on religious freedom and the place of religion in the public square.

La tolerancia es un ideal y una práctica que cotiza al alza dentro del universo de valores de las democracias contemporáneas. Esto debe vincularse con la relevancia alcanzada por movimientos políticos e intelectuales, como el comunitarismo o el multiculturalismo, que cuestionan la neutralidad estatal como fórmula para organizar sociedades caracterizadas por el pluralismo de concepciones del bien y formas de vida: habida cuenta de tal pluralismo, cuanto se asume el compromiso con una determinada comunidad de valores como algo ineludible, la tolerancia se presenta como imprescindible para la convivencia.

El pensamiento liberal ha acusado recibo de todo esto: la cuestión de cómo articular los rasgos diferenciales de los grupos preservando al tiempo un marco de convivencia liberal se convirtió en un asunto fundamental para la teoría política liberal de final del siglo XX. El planteamiento más significativo al respecto es, sin duda, el del liberalismo político de John Rawls, con su idea de la tolerancia como lo que hace posible un acuerdo sobre el orden político para una sociedad liberal pluralista. Sin embargo, otros filósofos contemporáneos muy influyentes también han reflexionado sobre la tolerancia: es el caso de Michael Walzer, John Gray, Richard Rorty o Joseph Raz, quienes, de maneras muy distintas coinciden en asumir el punto de vista de Isaiah Berlin de que existe una multiplicidad de valores políticos que no son necesariamente reconciliables entre sí.

El libro que el lector tiene entre sus manos se propone ofrecer una exposición crítica de los teóricos citados. Tal exposición ofrece una visión de su obra centrada en la solución que proponen para afrontar los problemas derivados de la diversidad social conflictiva, lo cual permite al autor del libro desarrollar su propuesta normativa referente a cómo debe entenderse y justificarse la tolerancia. Además, el libro ofrece una completa revisión histórica de las defensas modernas de la tolerancia, desde sus orígenes teológicos, que permite apreciar su continuidad en el pensamiento contemporáneo.  Igualmente, entra a considerar cómo ha evolucionado sociológicamente el valor de la tolerancia en las democracias modernas, las discusiones recientes acerca del concepto de tolerancia, o el cuestionado lugar que corresponde a la tolerancia en el contexto de un Estado social y democrático de derecho.

Nota: Debido a una errata de la que el autor no es responsable, y se está en trámite de corrección, el título aparece de manera incorrecta en la portada del libro y la página 3.

This article examines the tragic dimension of political action which, according to the interpretation of Isaiah Berlin, was expounded by Machiavelli where he defended the political priority of civic values of the classical world with the incompatible predominance of the Christian values of his time. The interpretation of Berlin is discussed first and then the article continues reflecting on the harm that derives from failing to take into account the tragic component of political decisions. However, flaws of adequacy and consistency are noted in the pluralistic philosophy developed by Berlin beginning with the proposition that not all ends are compatible with each other. These flaws in the philosophy of Berlin can be corrected if one chooses not to base pluralism in the incommensurable, taken as an inevitable fact. Instead, it is proposed to interpret pluralism as a contingent result of moral and political interaction.
According to Berlin, toleration is pluralism political correlation. However, it is debatable that the former can be derived from the latter.  Similarly, the manner in which pluralism sets its own limits appears to be inconsistent. This involves toleration claimed by Berlin becomes as uncertain as liberty and autonomy in the context of Machiavelli’s thought. In this connection, it will be submitted an interpretation of consequentialism as propounded by Machiavelli suitable for managing the risk in democratic societies.

This paper explores how philosophical inquiry and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) can mutually benefit from each other to produce new methodological and reflexive directions in neo-liberal policy research to examine the phenomenon of ‘What is (going on here)’. Through this we argue that augmenting linguistic analysis with philosophical perspectives develops and supports CDA scholarship more broadly by accommodating the shifting complexity of social problems of ideologically driven inequality that are inbuilt through, in our case, social policy texts. In discussing philosophical-methodological issues, the paper argues for the need to continually adapt CDA to the particular data so as to remain sensitive to and avoid hegemonic tendencies in analysis. Through adopting the principles of a working methodology, we discuss a micro-meso-macro CDA framework that draws on the analytical concepts of movement, metaphorical superfluidity, thematic condensation, and surrealism to conceive of a research approach capable of examining and comprehending evolving discourses of political economies. The most immediate benefit of this framework is its capacity to illustrate how forms of valuations perpetuated by and through policy discourse are the motivational locus of meaning making insofar as they strongly inform the moral underpinning the ideology of economic growth.

This paper presents detailed methods for constructing a flexible philosophical–analytical model through which to apply the analytic principles of CDA for the interpretation of metaphors across policy texts. Drawing on a theoretical framing from Foucault and the augmentation of Nietzsche’s views on valuation, we sketch a framework for examining ways in which evaluative semantic categories can be linked to sociological theories in order to bring out their relevance for the purpose of critical discourse analysis. This multi-level research framework draws upon a relationship between language analysis, the philosophical study of valuation, and political economy as a composite formulation of values through which neo-liberalism is discursively entwined and progressed through a system of principles of e/valuation.

James Meade argued that public ownership of productive assets should have a central role in a 'liberal socialist' economy. While somewhat sceptical of the state seeking to run specific firms or industries, Meade argued that the state should own a significant share of a society's productive assets, using the return on the assets to promote a more equal distribution of income (e.g., through payment of a universal social dividend). This paper traces the development of Meade's thinking around this citizens' trust concept; explores its influence in UK policy discussions; and makes the case for the continuing relevance of the proposal in response to contemporary economic developments.

In “Responding to Religious Patients: Why Physicians Have No Business Doing Theology,” Jake Greenblum and Ryan Hubbard draw from John Rawls’s Political Liberalism and its central concept of “public reason” to argue that physicians have a duty to avoid engaging the religious grounds cited by patients in medical decision making conversations. “Public reason” is an empty but prestigious concept that allows medical professionals to smuggle their own substantive  judgments as public reasons while dismissing the ethical judgments of outsiders as “sectarian.” The rhetoric of “public reason” insulates medical institutions from the disruptive forces of pluralism while providing a face-saving way of managing physician burnout and trauma by authorizing disengagement from distressed religious patients.

The dynamics of labor law, till today are still and ongoing, and one of them that continues to be debated is the practice of contract work. According to the workers, the practice of contract work is a new model of colonization, and it's unjust, but on the other hand it is the right choice and alternative strategy to survive in the economic turmoil and increasingly stringent of bussiness competition. Thing of interest for writers is the practice of standard clause in employe contract for a certain time/PKWT. The options for the worker / candidate is to accept or reject, no bargaining position moreover a treaty negotiations such in general. Whether this PKWT implementation means used by the party in a strong position to oppress and exploit others in a weak position. How applying of the principle of consensual and how the fulfillment and protection of the workers' basic rights with the implementation of a standard clause on this PKWT. This research method is normative juridical / doctrinal, researchers will collect legal materials then do reviewed and research to answer and explain every questions examined. The results showed that the application of standard clauses in PKWT does not meant there is the exploitation of labor in which the basic rights of workers are embezzled. The practice of PKWT, if it done in accordance with the Law No. 13 of 2003 and implementing the standards/procedures of its implementation as stipulated in Decree No 100 of 2004 will protect and keep the fulfillment of workers' basic rights and justice in their work. However, the standard clause in PKWT is not the right choice, it is fitting an employe contract/ PKWT made on a common will of parties to fulfill, so that the enforcement of rights and obligations do not require the pressure and coercion from party of one against the other party and vice versa.

Justice as fairness, as described by John Rawls in Political Liberalism, is a means for organizing a diversity of the reasonable political and moral convictions, held by rational and reasonable persons, as an accepted public political conception of justice. This public recognition of accepted principles of justice then motivates citizens to rely on a constitution as a means to fixing a just society. Motivation and acceptance through the constitution then institutionalizes the coercive power of government to force citizens to abide by those principles and is, according to Rawls, always legitimate and justified within a liberal society. In this paper, I am going to argue that this institutionalized use of coercive power within a liberal society (1) is not justified exclusively by a motivated public agreement on accepted principles of justice; and (2) that public agreement on principles of justice can arise only out of self-interest which calls into question how the use of state power is legitimate.

ΓΕΝΙΚΗ ΕΙΣΑΓΩΓΙΚΗ ΠΑΡΟΥΣΙΑΣΗ ΓΕΝΙΚΑ ΣΤΟΙΧΕΙΑ  Αμερικανός πολιτικός φιλόσοφος. Ο σπουδαιότερος πολιτικός φιλόσοφος του 20 ου αιώνα.  Η Θεωρία της Δικαιοσύνης (1971) συνιστά έργο -σταθμός, σημείο αναφοράς για όλη τη σύγχρονη πολιτική φιλοσοφία. Παρουσιάζει συστηματικά τη θεωρία δικαιοσύνης του που αποκαλεί «δικαιοσύνη ως ακριβοδικία» (justice as fairness)  Ανήκει στο ρεύμα του Εξισωτικού Φιλελευθερισμού. …

The philosopher Immanuel Kant held the idea of ‘duty’ to be of utmost importance when it came to ethics. This duty-centered approach to ethics is known as a “deontological” one, as opposed to an end-result based ethics known as being “teleological.” This essay will define Kant’s use of ‘duty,’ ‘oughts,’ ‘obligations,’ ‘merit,’ and ‘partiality,’ and the application of these terms to such examples as saving a child from drowning and saving a child on the other side of the world by donating to a charitable organization. In each of these two cases, Kant’s concept of ‘merit’ will be considered. Any contentions I have with Kant’s ethical approach with the given examples will be provided respectively.

This paper examines the way the metaphor of diversity provides a moral basis for inequality in Singapore’s meritocratic education system. Based upon a collection of policy texts from 2002 to 2012, our analysis illustrates that the metaphor of diversity in policy texts provides ways for systemic discrimination within the education system and that this inequality is given legitimacy as necessary through various moral discourses. The paper employs a critical discourse analysis that draws upon the relationship between language analysis, the philosophical study of valuation, and political economy as a composite formulation of values to highlight the ways in which an argument for inequality permeates policy from within a frame of meritocracy, and to analyse how changes associated with new modes of value determination serve to legitimize inequality.

1. The article questions and challenges the official meritocratic principle of ‘equal opportunities’ (Wong, 2000) in Singapore's education system. Drawing on Foucault's and Nietzsche's philosophical perspectives, there is an explicit illustration through an in-depth analysis of how inequality is inbuilt in policy report/speech.

2. Discourse builds in/tangible structures in society and greatly determines the possibilities of the now. As such, I am also arguing that it would be more difficult to 'help' any 'community' if the structural discrimination which has been deeply embedded, is not made explicit through national policies, and by this I mean an explicit illustration through an in-depth policy analysis of how inequality is inbuilt in Singapore's education policies. It may be through this that discriminatory structures could be substantially challenged.

An initial analysis of the original 1979 policy on primary school streaming which I conducted illustrates how dichotomous (arbitrary) categorization of pupils, i.e. 'slow' and 'fast' learners legitimates and sustains increasing institutional/structural access (over the years terms like 'talents' have been employed in policy discourse), of who gets privileged knowledge access. Through this, I also ask then to what ends do forms of 'categorization' or conventional designation entail? By this, given that categorization legitimizes structural access, my question is, what is 'Malay/Muslim community' and how is this categorization necessary?

3. Even though the analysis in the article was based on Singapore's education system, it provides possible ways of understanding how inequality is continuously being inbuilt through policies on the basis of the ideology that economic growth is the (only) way forward. A way to critique this ideology is to expose its underlying assumptions. I believe the findings have much resonance with the widening inequality across many developed nations, as Singapore's policies have parallels with that of the U.K., U.S., and international organizations such as the World Bank.

4. Economically considered, the transliteration of meritocratic discourse into the metaphor of diversity pinpoints how the appeal of development for all necessarily also demands the advance of inequity for the sake of the whole, i.e. advancing the 'growth with inequity' principle.

5. The analysis highlights that value judgments are continually at work in the policy discourse and that despite the strong discourse of meritocracy that the Singapore education system promotes, it is argued that it is in the interests of the Singapore people that 'talents' should get privileged access to knowledge as it is through this that more 'opportunities' for the rest of the population are created. The findings demonstrate that although the underlying assumptions of this 'logic' that has been constructed in policies are unsubstantiated, the logic is continuously legitimated through forms of e/valuations.



This article has been featured in websites such as: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150428105815.htm
http://www.eurasiareview.com/28042015-what-is-value-of-inequality-within-singapores-education-system/

A strength of liberal political institutions is their ability to accommodate pluralism, both allowing divergent comprehensive doctrines as well as constructing the common ground necessary for diverse people to live together.  A pressing question is how far such pluralism extends.  Which comprehensive doctrines are simply beyond the pale and need not be accommodated by a political consensus? Rawls attempted to keep the boundaries of reasonable disagreement quite broad by infamously denying that political liberalism need make reference to the concept of truth, a claim that has been criticized by Joseph Raz, Joshua Cohen, and David Estlund.  In this paper, we argue that these criticisms fail due to the fact that political liberalism can remain non-committal on the nature of truth, leaving the concept of truth in the domain of comprehensive doctrines while still avoiding the issues raised by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund.  Further substantiating this point is the fact that Rawls would, and should, include parties in the overlapping consensus whose views on truth may be incoherent.  Once it is seen that political liberalism allows such incoherence to reasonable parties, it is clear that the inclusion of truth and the requirement of coherence urged by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund requires more of reasonable people than is necessary for a political consensus.

Robert Nozick initiated one of the most inspired and inspiring discussions in political philosophy with his 1974 response in Anarchy, State, and Utopia to John Rawls’s 1971 account of distributive justice in A Theory of Justice. These two works have informed an enormous amount of subsequent, especially liberal, discussions of economic justice, where Nozick’s work typically functions as a resource for those defending more right-wing (libertarian) positions, whereas Rawls’s has been used to defend various left-wing stances. Common to these discussions, as found in politics generally (where similar kinds of arguments frequently are used to defend right and the left-wing policies and conclusions) is that they end in rather stubborn stalemates: the right defending minimal states while the left defends more extensive states. Interesting, too, is that both Nozick and Rawls take themselves to be consistent with, inspired by, and furthering Kant’s freedom project in the development of their own theories of justice. In this paper, I start by outlining the structures of these debates with an emphasis on the original disagreements between Nozick and Rawls. I then show how neither theory actually employed Kant’s own theory of justice, but rather drew on or out (presumed) implications of his ethical theory. In the final sections, I argue that if Nozick and Rawls had instead used Kant’s theory of justice and not his ethics, not only would their individual theories have been stronger, but they could have found ways of overcoming the unproductive stalemates that characterize their own as well as subsequent related discussions of economic justice as we currently find them in much scholarly and contemporary political debate.

If solutions to the problem of inequality are to be as radical as reality now demands, what is instead required is a reimagining of what would be involved comprehensively to tame capitalism through democratic means. This will involve much further development of the kind of plurality of institutional and policy proposals sketched by Meade, and will involve both the private and public – individual and collective – forms of capital predistribution that Meade advocated. Piketty, like Meade, sees the need for both redistribution and predistribution, and both see that the institutional means necessary to create a more equal society will involve pursuing a plurality of parallel paths. It is closely in keeping with the spirit of Piketty’s Capital that the political and intellectual agenda ahead will be one that economics on its own cannot hope to encompass. It’s a vital agenda, with high stakes, and presents challenges to both academic researchers and political activists. On the success of this endeavour depends nothing less than the prospects for legitimate continuation of our economic system.

Post-Enlightenment liberalism faces a paradox: The liberal principle of legitimacy demands states justify their constitutional order in terms citizens can accept, but there is no uncontroversial comprehensive conception of justice on which to form the requisite consensus. Rawls resolves the paradox by embracing a pragmatism that abandons the concept of truth in the political forum to secure consensus and legitimacy.

Freedom is overlooked as a legal and social concept, with few attempts to define it.  Lon Fuller articulated the critical question about freedom:  “How can the freedom of human beings be affected or advanced by social arrangement, that is by laws, customs, institutions, or other forms of social order that can be changed or preserved by purposive human actions?”  Freedom needs to be defined in the context of this question—as an ideal to be advanced by our social institutions, laws, and customs.  The article first begins with a framework for freedom established by Lon Fuller in a neglected article which emphasized "freedom to" rather than "freedom from."  The article then posits that freedom is a certain kind of relationship that exists between individuals and their kin, tribe, religious society, city, state, sovereign, or other body politic under conditions in which (1) such body is subject to the rule of law with real checks on power such that legal standards be general, promulgated, clear, prospective, consistent, satisfiable, stable and applied; (2) there exists democratic and representative government at all pertinent levels of community in which the individual is engaged and by which arrangements the individual's actions may from time to time be legitimately directed; (3) fundamental human rights are not only expressed in the constitution and law, but operate as trumps on the will of the majority or sovereign; and(4) the general welfare or social justice is sufficiently observed that the exercise of fundamental rights and privileges is meaningful, but such rights and privileges are not suppressed by attempts to serve general welfare or social justice. Each of these four “modalities” is explored in turn.  The article also applies concepts of law as social planning from Yale Professor Scott Shapiro's new book, Legality, to affirm the role of government to enhance choice and individual freedom.  In its truest sense, freedom is similar to citizenship, with both attendant rights and obligations. 
Forthcoming in Pace Law Review 37.2 (2017).

One of the most interesting yet under-explored features of the liberal debate on global justice is the presence of what can be termed Rawlzickians. Rawlzickians are statists who reject libertarianism domestically for Rawlsian reasons, yet employ libertarian terms and arguments globally. My main purpose here is to show that the significance of this libertarian language has been vastly underestimated, even by those who speak it.

A slightly-Wittgensteinian investigation of how the justice metaphor is insufficient for grounding our obligations to future generations. Forthcoming in PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS. Feedback very welcome as we make the final changes to this before that!

Un élément dans la Théorie de la justice en 1971 aurait pu passer inaperçu : la référence à la théorie du linguiste Chomsky (Rawls, 1997). Passage furtif, mais révélateur de ce qui se passe dans l’ébullition philosophique des années 60/70.

Nous situons notre contribution d’un point de vue épistémologique et souhaitons montrer l’intérêt de produire une réflexion comparative entre la théorie rawlsienne et chomskyenne. Rawls et Chomsky partagent la même inclination pour un individu rationnel capable de faire émerger les principes de justice dans la position originelle comme d’accéder universellement au langage dans la grammaire universelle chomskyenne (Chomsky, 1971). Un même goût pour l’affirmation de principes généraux et abstraits avec comme point de convergence l’égalité des potentialités commune à tous les êtres humains.

Notre analyse vise à montrer non pas que ces deux auteurs travaillaient de concert, mais plutôt de rendre compte qu’ils répondaient chacun à leur manière aux signes des temps, à l’implication de près ou de loin au débat sur la guerre du Vietnam et à ses horreurs présentes dans la tête de chaque américain, à la montée des aspirations égalitaires dans le sillage du mouvement des droits civiques ou encore les revendications de la contre-culture américaine sur les campus universitaires. 

Nous faisons donc l’hypothèse qu’au-delà d’une réelle inspiration (nous ne disposons que de peu de faits pour le dire), les parcours respectifs de Rawls et Chomsky dans leur discipline respective, sont le reflet d’un climat, d’une époque qui tend vers l’universalisme et l’égalité. Dans des combats partisans et militants, et dont les philosophes et les scientifiques se saisissent. Nous nous inscrivons dans la recherche d’un faisceau d’indices qui ne feront pas une théorie générale de transfert analogique, mais qui donneront à réfléchir à des mouvements épistémologiques communs dans leur construction, mais aussi dans le type de critiques qu’ils recevront. Ce que nous appellerons plus prosaïquement des regards croisés.

When  Rawls’  A  Theory  of  Justice  was  published  in  1971, a
conversational  debate  on  justice  was  already  underway  between  him  and  Polish/Belgian legal  theorist  Chaïm  Perelman.  In  1975,  Michel  Meyer, outlined  that  this  debate  on  a workable theory of justice was based upon the fact that Rawls was operating from Kantian starting point (which was ahistorical, abstract and universal), while Perelman was operating from  a  modified  Hegelian  starting  point  (which  was  resolutely  historical,  concrete  and particular).  Meyer  states:  “For  Rawls,  it  seems  that  the  principles  of  justice,  which  are deduced from the postulated existence of an original situation, are formal truths, whatever he may say about it. However, for Perelman, «the rules of a constituted society are for the most part products of a historic past» . . ., as well as their improvements”.  As he concludes, “Rawls’
ambition is to think out a consistent theory of justice which would be a philosophical ideal that ought to be realized on earth. Perelman’s ambition on the other hand, is not to think out what should, but what could be in a world torn by conflicts of interests and passions”. From these two diverse perspectives on justice, I will then consider the ‘wicked’ issue of defining and  applying  the  ambiguous  concept  of  ‘merit’  in  Anglo-American  societies;  the  current debate of which seems to parallel the larger philosophical debate of justice (as per its nature versus its application) as demonstrated between Rawls and Perelman.

Para quienes tengan interés en la filosofía moral y política contemporánea la obra de John Rawls es sin discusión una parada necesaria. De hecho, la tesis de Robert Nozick según la cual resulta imposible hacer filosofía moral y política sin considerar el marco ofrecido por Rawls, aunque parezca extrema, resulta bastante acertada. En gran medida el impacto de la obra de Rawls radica en su interés por ofrecer una teoría sustantiva de la justicia, teoría que hundiendo sus raíces en la tradición de la filosofía sea capaz de orientarnos al momento de abordar las discusiones contemporáneas sobre justicia social.

En los trabajos que componen este libro el lector podrá encontrar una discusión actualizada sobre aquellos elementos que definen la base moral y política que Rawls presentó como fundamento de su teoría de la justicia. Al mismo tiempo, estos ensayos intentan construir un puente entre la justicia como equidad y otras tradiciones de la filosofía moral y política contemporánea. Para lograr este último fin, varios de los trabajos que aquí se presentan consideran las ideas de reconocimiento y autorrespeto como claves de interpretación de la obra de Rawls

The idea of equality features in a number of competing accounts of the demands of justice, and does so in a variety of different ways. In what follows here I first examine the background role of a formal idea of equality in all plausible accounts of justice, before then moving on to describe the place of a more substantive idea of equality in the best known and most influential account of justice, that of John Rawls. I then consider a number of post-Rawlsian accounts of the place of equality as an ideal of justice, including an examination of the " equality of resources " view of Ronald Dworkin, and the " luck egalitarianism " of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, before discussing the contrast between 'distributive' and 'social' (or 'relational') approaches to equality.

The article argues that Rawlsian theory of justice can be better understood on its own merits, rather than as a defense of any particular or historical system of economic regulation. The challenge is to make a clear distinction between the ethical meaning and institutional commitments of the Theory. The argument says that the openness to a wide range of arrangements coming from social-democratic, property-owning democracy or classical liberal approaches can be the best path to a theory that proposes to serve as a point of convergence for the multiple conceptions of the good within our democratic tradition.

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has, in the words of Paul Krugman, “transformed our economic discourse” about wealth and inequality. It is difficult to think of a recent work of social science that has received as much attention, or had so much impact, both within academic debates and in terms of broader public discourse. Piketty’s work clearly carries weighty implications not only for economics, but also for many neighboring disciplines, among which we can count political philosophy. Now that the dust has settled after the initial round of scholarly engagement with Piketty’s book, and after Piketty himself has had the opportunity to refine and finesse the central points of his analysis in a slew of post-Capital writings, the time is ripe for an assessment of the book’s full significance from the standpoint of political philosophy, and to consider its full implications in terms of how we should think about public policy.

In this article I examine the main conceptual, historical, and normative
claims of Piketty’s Capital, and show how the book provides an important impetus towards an egalitarian research agenda in political philosophy and public policy. I begin in sections II through IV by considering Piketty’s main conceptual and historical claims about the dynamics of inequality. In section V, I consider the normative commitments of Piketty’s account of inequality, look at the (partially submerged or implicit) ways in which Capital in the Twenty-First Century can itself be read as a work of political philosophy, and relate Piketty’s egalitarianism to philosophical accounts of the badness of socio-economic inequality. Section VI addresses some aspects of the general significance of Capital for the discipline of political philosophy. Finally, sections VII and VIII consider a range of strategies for egalitarian public policy, showing the role of political philosophy in laying out the space of possible alternative approaches, and maps an agenda for future research.

Rawls’ primary legacy is not that he standardised a particular view of justice, but rather that he standardised a particular method of arguing about it: justification via reflective equilibrium. Yet this method, despite such standardisation, is often misunderstood in at least four ways. First, we miss its continuity across his various works. Second, we miss the way in which it unifies other justificatory ideas, such as the ‘original position’ and an ‘overlapping consensus’. Third, we miss its fundamentally empirical character, given that it turns facts about the thoughts in our head into principles for the regulation of our political existence. Fourth, we miss some of the implications of that empiricism, including its tension with moral realism, relativism, and conservatism.