32. Rawls

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rex Martin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Economic Justice ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
Main Ideas

This chapter examines the main arguments for John Rawls's ideas about justice. Rawls identified two principles as central to political liberalism: the principle of equal basic rights and liberties, and a principle of economic justice, which stresses equality of opportunity, mutual benefit, and egalitarianism. In Rawls's interpretation, these two principles take place ultimately in an ideal arena for decision-making, which he calls the ‘original position’. In time, Rawls became dissatisfied with this approach and began to reconfigure his theory, moving the focus towards a ‘family’ of liberal principles. The chapter begins by discussing Rawls's first and second principles before considering his concept of ‘original position’ as well as his views on overlapping consensus. It concludes with an analysis of the main ideas contained in Rawls's 1999 book, The Law of Peoples.

Hyper-pluralism and the multivariate democratic polity

2012 ◽  
Vol 38 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 435-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandro Ferrara
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Religious Conflict ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Law Of Peoples ◽  
Democratic Polity ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
The Law ◽  
Global World

In the global world, momentous migratory tides have produced hyper-pluralism on the domestic scale, bringing citizens with radically different conceptions of life, justice and the good to coexist side by side. Conjectural arguments about the acceptance of pluralism, the next best to public reason when shared premises are too thin, may not succeed in convincing all constituencies. What resources, then, can liberal democracy mobilize? The multivariate democratic polity is the original answer to this question, based on an interpretation of Rawls which revisits Political Liberalism in the light of The Law of Peoples. The unscrutinized assumption is highlighted, often read into Rawls’s Political Liberalism, that a polity moves homogeneously and all of a piece from religious conflict to modus vivendi, constitutional consensus and finally to overlapping consensus. Drawing on The Law of Peoples, a different picture can be obtained.

Psychological Stability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Sugden
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
General Belief ◽  
Over Time

Chapter 8 asks what properties a market economy must have if it is to be psychologically stable—that is, if it is to reproduce a general belief that its governing principles are fair. I argue that, because of the division of knowledge and because the opportunities open to each person depend on how other people choose to use their opportunities, full equality of opportunity is not compatible with a market economy. Psychological stability has to rest on continuing expectations of mutual benefit, defined relative to a baseline that evolves over time and that cannot be justified in terms of abstract principles of fairness. However, if the market is to be recommended to each individual separately, each individual must be able to expect to share in the benefits that markets create. Maintaining such expectations typically requires redistributive mechanisms.

scholarly journals Should we Ascribe Capabilities to Species and Ecosystems? A Critical Analysis of Ecocentric Versions of the Capabilities Approach

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Melin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
As Species ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines ◽  
Sentient Beings

AbstractMartha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach is today one of the most influential theories of justice. In her earlier works on the capabilities approach, Nussbaum only applies it to humans, but in later works she extends the capabilities approach to include sentient animals. Contrary to Nussbaum’s own view, some scholars, for example, David Schlosberg, Teea Kortetmäki and Daniel L. Crescenzo, want to extend the capabilities approach even further to include collective entities, such as species and ecosystems. Though I think we have strong reasons for preserving ecosystems and species within the capabilities approach, there are several problems with ascribing capabilities to them, especially if we connect it with the view that species and ecosystems are subjects of justice. These problems are partly a consequence of the fact that an ascription of capabilities to species and ecosystems needs to be based on an overlapping consensus between different comprehensive doctrines, in accordance with the framework of political liberalism on which the capabilities approach builds. First, the ascription of capabilities to species and ecosystems presupposes the controversial standpoint that they are objectively existing entities. Second, the ascription of capabilities to ecosystems and species and the view that they are subjects of justice is justified by claiming that they have integrity and agency, but these characteristics have different meanings when applied to collective entities and humans, respectively. Third, the view that species and ecosystems are subjects of justice seems to require the controversial assumption that they have interests of their own, which differ from the interests of the sentient beings that are part of them. However, even if we do not ascribe capabilities to species and ecosystems and regard them as subjects of justice, there are still strong reasons to protect them within the capabilities approach, as the preservation of ecosystems and species is an important precondition for many human and animal capabilities.

Political testimony

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Han van Wietmarschen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Decision Procedure ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Political Judgment ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Political Question

I argue that reliance on political testimony conflicts with two democratic values: the value of mutual justifiability and the value of equality of opportunity for political influence. Reliance on political testimony is characterized by a reliance on the assertions of others directly on a political question the citizen is asked to answer as part of a formal democratic decision procedure. Reliance on expert testimony generally, even in the context of political decision-making, does not similarly conflict with democratic values. As a consequence of the argument, citizens have a pro tanto reason to rely on their own political judgment when determining their vote, and democratic societies have a reason to only ask citizens questions they are able to answer without reliance on political testimony.

scholarly journals How “political” is Quong’s political liberalism?

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-56
Author(s):  
Enrico Zoffoli
Keyword(s):  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
The Political ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Political Conception ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines

In this short paper I ask to what extent the sharp contrast between the political and the comprehensive, on which political liberals such as Rawls and Quong place primary emphasis, caters to a truly ?political? conception of liberalism. I argue that Quong?s own take on this point is more distinctively ?political? than Rawls?s, in that it assigns far less weight to citizens? comprehensive doctrines. Indeed, I suggest that Quong?s exclusion of comprehensive doctrines (exemplified by his worries about an ?overlapping consensus?) has more radical implications than Quong himself seems to think. In doing so, I offer a streamlined version of Quong?s critique, which encompasses two more or less direct criticisms of Rawls?s doctrine of the overlapping consensus. I will call them the ?sincerity objection? and the ?liberal objection?.

scholarly journals Connecting the Dots: Engaging Wider Forms of Openness for the Mutual Benefit of Musicians and Musicologists

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-46
Author(s):  
Mark R. H. Gotham
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Mutual Benefit ◽  
Connecting The Dots

While it is encouraging to see renewed attention to 'openness' in academia, that debate (and its interpretation of the F.A.I.R. principles) is often rather narrowly defined. This paper addresses openness in a broad sense, asking not so much whether a project is open, but how open and to whom. I illustrate these ideas through examples of my own ongoing projects which to seek to make the most of a potential symbiosis between academic and wider musical communities. Specifically, I discuss how these communities can both benefit from – and even work together on building – highly accessible and interoperable corpora of scores and analyses when ambitious openness is factored into decision making from the outset.

The Morally Constitutive State

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Erskine
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Constitutive Theory ◽  
International Ethics ◽  
Law Of Peoples

This chapter discusses the idea of the morally constitutive state. It introduces the second point of theoretical opposition for embedded cosmopolitanism. This forms an approach to international ethics that was extracted from MacIntyre’s essay on patriotism; the approach is termed as communitarian realism. The chapter also addresses statist perspectives, namely the extended political liberalism, from which John Rawls champions his ‘Law of Peoples’, and the ‘constitutive theory of individuality’ of Mervyn Frost.

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