scholarly journals The Political Meaning of the Right and the Privatization of the Good

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-25
Author(s):  
Piotr Andryszczak
Keyword(s):  
Original Position ◽  
The Political ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrine ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Just Society ◽  
The Veil ◽  
The Right

The Political Meaning of the Right and the Privatization of the Good In today's philosophical and political world we come across an influential current within liberalism called procedural. It faces the problem of building a just society by proposing a formula: the priority of the right over the good. It can be easily found in Rawls's A Theory of Justice which starts from the original position which means that individuals, behind the veil of ignorance, do not know anything about their social location, talents and their own conceptions of the good. Because of such ignorance they would constitute the just society. It would be regulated by two principles of justice, chosen behind the veil of ignorance and reflecting the priority of the right over the good. Nevertheless Rawls understood that this conception could be accepted only by Liberals because it represents an example of a comprehensive doctrine. Therefore he reinterpreted his conception and presented it as political in his Political Liberalism. It has three features: it is worked out for the basic structure of a constitutional democratic regime; it does not depend for its justification on any particular comprehensive doctrine; and, it is formulated in terms of two fundamental ideas implicit in the public culture of a democratic society (the ideas of society as a fair system of cooperation, and of persons viewed as free and equal). Due to this reinterpretation, the justification of his principles of justice proceeds from what is held in common and leads to an agreement based on "an overlapping consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines". In this way the good becomes something strictly private and completely absent in the public sphere. Such position is obviously very controversial but a critical approach to it will be a subject of another paper.

E Pluribus Unum

1977 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 49-70
Author(s):  
D. A. Lloyd Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Original Position ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Primary Goods ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Conception Of The Good ◽  
Recent Version ◽  
Liberal Thought

One tradition of liberal thought is committed to showing on the basis of an individualistic conception of what is good that it is reasonable for all persons to accept certain common principles. The most recent version of this enterprise is to be found in Professor John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. Rawls has to show that persons in the ‘original position’, with plans of life which will turn out to be different, though equally rational, when the ‘veil of ignorance’ has been lifted, nevertheless have reason to accept common principles of justice. One might have expected divergent views about the best principles of justice to adopt, considering that the rationality of choices is related to desires, and that parties in the original position may have different desires. Rawls meets this problem by introducing the ‘primary goods’: those things it is rational to want whatever else one wants. By employing this ‘thin’ theory of the good in the original position, Rawls attempts to show that the choices of all parties will converge upon his two principles of justice. Each individual's ‘full’ conception of the good may then be developed within the constraints imposed by the principles of justice.

The Irreconcilable Conflict between Islam and Liberalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 247-265
Author(s):  
Muhammad Zahid Siddique
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Pluralistic Society ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Veil

John Rawls used an apparently neutral apparatus to derive the principles of justice that all “rational” people ought to agree with because they provide the basis of coexistence in a pluralistic society. He believes that religious faith is consistent with the commitment to liberalism. The paper shows that the Rawlsian liberal “self” modelled in the original position is not consistent with the original position recognized by religion in general and Islam in particular. According to Islam, the human self is mukallaf (subject of God) while Rawls treats it non-mukallaf. This is so because Rawlsian original position presumes an atheist self behind the veil of ignorance. This conceptualization of self is not only inconsistent with but also hostile to religion. The claims about liberalism’s tolerance towards religion are superficial. The liberal self can express itself in various religious forms provided these are aligned with the system of rights acknowledged by the liberal atheist self.

scholarly journals John Rawls’s Concept of Justice as Fairness

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 179
Author(s):  
Edor J. Edor
Keyword(s):  
Original Position ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Traditional Conception ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Veil

John Rawls's theory of Justice is one of the most influential conceptions of justice. Scholars have continued to study it to understand the principles in the formation and to further frame it in the context of contemporary situations. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion by presenting Rawls’ concept of “justice as fairness” as it evolved from the traditional conception of justice to the modern-shift in the concept. The paper also examines Rawls’s concept of justice as fairness, and it focuses on analyzing or studying the concept of justice as fairness in terms of the principles used in its formulations. Several criticisms developed by political philosophers to critique the idea were examined. In conclusion, it was argued that Rawls's invention of the veil-of-ignorance for the original position has affected the theory negatively.

Sprawiedliwość jako racjonalność

Etyka ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Hanna Buczyńska-Garewicz
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Veil

The article deals with John Rawls’ theory of justice. The principal categories of Rawls’ book are analysed; especially the “veil of ignorance” and the principles of justice. Author’s attention is focused on some philosophical aspects of the concept of justice. The question of grounding of the idea of justice is analysed. Rawls’ theory is criticized for its lack of explanation in which way the idea of justice is given: is it a primordial experience or a result of the rational calculus?

Rawls, Risk, and the Maximin Principle

2020 ◽  
pp. 149-154
Author(s):  
Barbara H. Fried
Keyword(s):  
Rational Choice ◽  
Utility Functions ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Uncertainty Aversion ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
Maximin Principle ◽  
The Veil

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls acknowledged that rational choice behind the veil of ignorance would generally yield average utilitarianism—John Harsanyi’s conclusion fifteen years earlier. The question is, why would it yield a different conclusion in the Original Position? If, as Rawls assumed, the representative person would be infinitely risk averse in those unique circumstances, utility functions would reflect that preference in the relative weights assigned to different outcomes, yielding Rawls’s maximin solution. In short, Rawls’s disagreement with utilitarians is an empirical dispute about individual preferences and nothing more. Rawls believed the disagreement was more fundamental, because of two erroneous assumptions about standard utility functions: that they reflect peoples’ psychological attitudes toward risk-taking rather than their preferences over a range of outcomes, that they would ignore the transitory disutility of uncertainty aversion in calculating expected utilities.

Methodenfragen der Gerechtigkeitstheorie

1979 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arend Kulenkampff
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Veil ◽  
To Come

AbstractThe purpose of this paper is the clarification of some methodological problems concerning Rawls’ theory of justice. The first part seeks to make more precise Tugendhat’s distinction between 1st-person-theory and 3rd-person-theory. Rawls’ theory fulfills all criteria for 1st-person-theories. In the second part Rawl’s coherence model for the justification of norms („reflective equilibrium“) is critically analyzed and opposed to the hypothetical decision which individuals are to make in the original position (contract model). It is shown that the conception of reflective equilibrium is in various aspects mistaken. In conclusion a problem is indicated which Rawls has not satisfactorily resolved: The veil of ignorance is supposed to guarantee that the decision for the basic principles of social justice is unanimous. Nevertheless it would appear that the individuals in the original position either have too little empirical knowledge in order to make a rational decision, or they have too much knowledge in order to come to an unanimous decision. The veil of ignorance is either too fine or not fine enough.

Justice as Luck Egalitarian Fairness?

Dialogue ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 741-750
Author(s):  
LOUIS-PHILIPPE HODGSON
Keyword(s):  
Original Position ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Right ◽  
Luck Egalitarian

In A Conceptual Investigation of Justice, Kyle Johannsen maintains that the strongest version of John Rawls’s theory of justice is one that incorporates the luck egalitarian conception of fairness developed by G.A. Cohen. He also contends that, once the theory is modified in this way, it becomes clear that the original position doesn’t yield principles of justice but rather what Cohen calls ‘rules of regulation.’ I argue that the minimal conception of fairness that Rawls favours is the right one for his purposes, and that bringing in luck egalitarian fairness would render the outcome of the original position indeterminate.

How to Justify Principles of Justice

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Zhang Guoqing
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Rational Decision ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Veil Of Ignorance ◽  
Justice As Fairness ◽  
The Core ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
The Veil

AbstractJohn Rawls assumes that in the original position, under the veil of ignorance, after bargaining amongst each other, free, equal, moral and rational persons would make a rational decision to accept the principles of justice as fairness and thus the principles are established. Critics, however, question the authenticity and validity of this justification strategy. When rational individuals take the principles of justice as an original agreement, it is not a real contract. Rawls’s conception of justice as fairness is just a personal notion, some individuals may accept it, but it is impossible to be accepted by all human beings in a real world. Therefore there is a justification/acceptance paradox of those principles which are the core of his political philosophy. So how should we justify those principles? Its answers may be provided not in the light of a philosophical justification but of a scientific one.

scholarly journals Where the Right Gets in: On Rawls’s Criticism of Habermas’s Conception of Legitimacy

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Gordon Finlayson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Original Position ◽  
The Political ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrine ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

AbstractMany commentators have failed to identify the important issues at the heart of the debate between Habermas and Rawls. This is partly because they give undue attention to differences between Rawls’s original position and Habermas’s principle (U), neither of which is germane to the actual dispute. The dispute is at bottom about how best to conceive of democratic legitimacy. Rawls indicates where the dividing issues lie when he objects that Habermas’s account of democratic legitimacy is comprehensive and his is confined to the political. But his argument is vitiated by a threefold ambiguity in what he means by ‘comprehensive doctrine’. Tidying up this ambiguity helps reveal that the dispute turns on the way in which morality relates to political legitimacy. Although Habermas calls his conception of legitimate law ‘morally freestanding’, and as such distinguishes it from Kantian and natural law accounts of legitimacy, it is not as freestanding from morality as he likes to present it. Habermas’s mature theory contains conflicting claims about the relation between morality and democratic legitimacy. So there is at least one important sense in which Rawls’s charge of comprehensiveness is made to stick against Habermas’s conception of democratic legitimacy, and remains unanswered.

Associations and Democracy

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Cohen ◽  
Joel Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Political Justification ◽  
Distribution Of Resources ◽  
Principles Of Justice ◽  
Political Principles

Since the publication of John Rawls'sA Theory of Justice, normative democratic theory has focused principally on three tasks: refining principles of justice, clarifying the nature of political justification, and exploring the public policies required to ensure a just distribution of education, health care, and other basic resources. Much less attention has been devoted to examining the political institutions and social arrangements that might plausibly implement reasonable political principles. Moreover, the amount of attention paid to issues of organizational and institutional implementation has varied sharply across the different species of normative theory. Neoliberal theorists, concerned chiefly with protecting liberty by taming power, and essentially hostile to the affirmative state, have been far more sensitive to such issues than egalitarian-democratic theorists, who simultaneously embrace classically liberal concerns with choice, egalitarian concerns with the distribution of resources, and a republican emphasis on the values of citizen participation and public debate (we sketch such a conception below in Section I). Neglect of how such values might be implemented has deepened the vulnerability of egalitarian-democratic views to the charge of being unrealistic: “good in theory but not so good in practice.”

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