DESIGUALDADE ECONÔMICA E DIREITOS POLÍTICOS NA TEORIA DA JUSTIÇA DE RAWLS: UMA ANÁLISE A PARTIR DE THOMAS SCANLON

O presente artigo pretende problematizar a maneira como a questão das desigualdades socioeconômicas e dos direitos políticos são tratadas na teoria da justiça originalmente formulada por John Rawls. Sabe-se que Rawls, na década de 1970, revolucionou os debates sobre justiça distributiva com a formulação da teoria que ficou conhecida como equidade, que se baseia na proposição de dois princípios de justiça, o primeiro tendo prioridade em relação ao segundo, destinados a reger a estrutura básica da sociedade. Muito recentemente, contudo, uma série de desafios teóricos à tradição liberal igualitária, da qual Rawls é um grande expoente, foi lançada por Thomas Scanlon, em sua proposta de atribuir à igualdade um valor intrínseco. O objetivo deste trabalho é mostrar como uma das questões levantadas por Scanlon, concernente à questão da participação política, pode ser capaz de comprometer seriamente a proposta original de Rawls de tal forma que a distribuição indicada como justa pelos próprios princípios acabaria por quebrar a prioridade estabelecida entre eles. Primeiramente, faremos um estudo sistemático de como Rawls elabora seus dois princípios de justiça e qual o lugar da igualdade dentro deles, com ênfase para os elementos relevantes para a análise posterior. Em seguida, tentaremos demonstrar, a partir do ponto de vista oferecido por Scanlon, como é possível encontrar em Rawls uma tensão entre a garantia de igual direito de participação política a todos, de um lado, e a permissão de desigualdades socioeconômicas, de outro.

Socrates, Vlastos, Scanlon and the Principle of the Sovereignty of Virtue

This article offers a new formulation of the Socratic principle known as the Principle of the Sovereignty of Virtue (PSV). It is divided in three sections. In the first section I criticize Vlastos’ formulation of the PSV. In the second section I present the weighing model of practical deliberation, introduce the concepts of reason for action, simple reason, sufficient reason and conclusive reason that were offered by Thomas Scanlon in Being realistic about reasons (2014), and then I adapt these concepts so as to render them apt to be used in the formulation I intend to offer. In the third section I present my formulation of the PSV using the concepts introduced in the second section and explain why I believe this formulation is better than the one offered by Vlastos.

Proprietary Estoppel

This chapter examines the importance of proprietary estoppel (PE) in terms of Equity’s mission of aligning moral responsibility with legal liability, focusing on PE claims that are based on a ‘common expectation’ that arises in the context of pre-contractual negotiations. It first considers what Thomas Scanlon calls Principle L (for Loss prevention) and how its tort-like exposition misses—or glosses over—the voluntary modus of the loss prevention obligation (LPO). It then explains how the legal enforcement of LPOs can be justified from the perspectives of justice and efficiency, and how the conscionability element enables the courts to balance the Rule of Law (ROL) and Accountability Correspondence in the regulation of the pre-contractual stage. It concludes with the argument that Equity, via the doctrine of PE, is redressing a significant failure in the Common Law to tackle behaviour that disregards both morality and efficiency.

Το γενικό μέρος των βασικών δικαιωμάτων μέσα από τη θεωρία του Τhomas Scanlon

Αν υιοθετήσουμε τη θέση ότι το δίκαιο και δη τα βασικά δικαιώματα θα πρέπει να συνδέονται με την ηθική, τότε η θεωρία του Thomas Scanlon φαίνεται να παρουσιάζει ιδιαίτερο ενδιαφέρον. Στόχος της διατριβής είναι να διερευνηθεί αν είναι δυνατό να εξαχθούν από τη θεωρία του Scanlon χρήσιμα συμπεράσματα για την εγχώρια νομική επιστήμη. Το πρώτο κεφάλαιο επικεντρώνεται στη σχέση δικαίου και ηθικής και αναπτύσσεται μέσα από την αντιπαραβολή των θεωριών του νομικού φορμαλισμού και του νομικού ρεαλισμού, όπως λαμβάνει χώρα ιδίως στo περιβάλλον των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών Αμερικής. Αναδεικνύονται οι λόγοι, για τους οποίους τα βασικά δικαιώματα θα πρέπει να γίνονται κατανοητά και ως ηθικές επιταγές. Στο δεύτερο κεφάλαιο γίνεται αναφορά στη θεωρία του Thomas Scanlon, κυρίως στον κοντρακτουαλισμό του, αλλά και σε επιμέρους θέσεις του που παρουσιάζουν ενδιαφέρον για το ερευνητικό αντικείμενο της διατριβής. Στο τρίτο κεφάλαιο αναδεικνύονται οι θέσεις του Scanlon που αφορούν στο γενικό μέρος των βασικών δικαιωμάτων και αντιπαραβάλλονται με κριτική διάθεση προς αυτές της εγχώριας θεωρίας. Στο τέταρτο κεφάλαιο συνοψίζονται τα συμπεράσματα της διατριβής και υποστηρίζεται η θέση ότι η θεωρία του Scanlon μπορεί να κομίσει χρήσιμα στοιχεία για την κατανόηση του γενικού μέρους των βασικών δικαιωμάτων.

Fondamentalisme ou constructivisme des raisons? Les limites du réalisme normatif de Thomas Scanlon

Dans cet article, nous soutenons que le fondamentalisme des raisons défendu par T.M. Scanlon fait face à deux difficultés importantes — l’une ontologique, l’autre épistémologique —, soit le problème de la permissivité ontologique et le défi de la fiabilité. Nous suggérons que le constructivisme formel permet de les éviter et que Scanlon gagnerait à l’adopter. Nous montrons également que ses trois principales objections envers cette théorie reposent soit sur une mécompréhension du constructivisme formel, soit sur une pétition de principe en faveur du réalisme.

Desire Satisfactionism and the Problem of Irrelevant Desires

Desire-satisfaction theories about welfare come in two main varieties: unrestricted and restricted. Both varieties hold that a person's welfare is determined entirely by the satisfactions and frustrations of his desires. But while the restricted theories count only some of a person’s desires as relevant to his well-being, the unrestricted theories count all of his desires as relevant. Because unrestricted theories count all desires as relevant they are vulnerable to a wide variety of counterexamples involving desires that seem obviously irrelevant. Derek Parfit offers a well-known example involving a stranger afflicted with what seems to be a fatal disease. Similar examples are offered by Thomas Scanlon, James Griffin, Shelly Kagan, and others. In this paper I defend a simple unrestricted desire-based theory of welfare from the claim that some of our desires are irrelevant to how well our lives go. I begin by introducing the theory I aim to defend. I then formulate the Irrelevant-Desires Problem and reject a few rationales for its key premise. I then consider and reject a few flawed responses to the problem. I finally offer an obvious but widely overlooked response: I bite the bullet. My overall goal is to dissuade those sympathetic to a desire-based approach to welfare from rejecting unrestricted forms of desire satisfactionism simply because some desires may seem irrelevant to how well our lives go.

A Unified Moral Terrain?

In his book What We Owe to Each Other, Thomas Scanlon proposes what he calls a ‘contractualist’ explanation of what he describes as ‘a central part of the territory called morality’, i.e. our duties to other rational creatures. If Scanlon is right, the fact that another creature is rational generates a particular kind of moral constraint on how we may act towards it: one should ‘treat rational creatures only in ways that would be allowed by principles that they could not reasonably reject insofar as they too were seeking principles of mutual governance which other rational creatures could not reasonably reject’. This is then used to explain what makes actions right, at least within his central moral area. Such actions will be right because they are permitted by principles that cannot reasonably be rejected. In this essay, I question both whether Scanlon succeeds in identifying a proper part of the moral terrain as a subject for his account and also what, if any, is the contractualist content of that account. I argue that he equivocates between two distinct and incompatible conceptions of the justifiability of principles. According to the first, justifiability is a relation between principles and people, whilst according to the second, for a principle to be justifiable is for it to be justified. For his explanation of morality to have any contractualist force, justifiability needs to be understood as a relation, but for that explanation to have any plausibility, justifiability must be understood nonrelationally. Because of this, the account is unstable and fails to describe any part of the moral landscape.

Scanlon’s contractualism: A review essay

The purpose of this essay is to give a succinct summary of contractualism, an influential moral theory of American philosopher Thomas Scanlon. Scanlon introduced contractualism in his essay ?Contractualism and Utilitarianism? from 1982 and developed it in his book What We Owe to Each Other from 1998. The essay begins by situating Scanlon?s contractualism in the tradition of contract theories of morality. It then examines its peculiarities as a metaethical and a normative ethical theory. Finally, it discusses the most important objections to contractualism, ending with recommended secondary literature for subsequent researchers.

O hiato (in)transponível entre fatos e valores: uma abordagem a partir do realismo-cognitivo de Thomas Scanlon

No decorrer dos últimos três séculos desenvolveu-se em ética uma dicotomia entre fatos e valores cuja influência ainda hoje gera discussões. Nesse ensejo, a intenção deste artigo é propor, a partir do realismo-cognitivo de Scanlon, uma leitura alternativa a respeito dessa dicotomia estabelecida entre fatos e valores. Em geral, boa parte desse problema deve-se ao motivo de que as reivindicações do domínio normativo são muitas vezes avaliadas a partir da ótica da ciência (domínio não-normativo), isto é, da visão científica de mundo (scientific view of the world). Mas conforme buscarei sustentar, é preciso que o domínio normativo seja avaliado a partir dos padrões de seu próprio domínio cujo elemento básico é a relação ser uma razão para (being a reason for). Verdades normativas são irredutíveis na medida em que são determinadas por certos padrões de resposta dentro de um domínio específico em si mesmo, o que no campo normativo é realizado pela ideia de reivindicações normativas puras. Assim, partindo-se do pressuposto de que verdades normativas são irredutíveis e que, nesse caso, podem ser verdadeiras ou falsas, o melhor modo de compreendê-las é a partir da relação R (p, x, c, a), sendo p um fato, x um agente, c um conjunto de condições e circunstâncias e a uma ação ou atitude. A partir desse padrão constituído no interior do domínio normativo, a relação R estabelece que p é uma razão para um agente x realizar uma ação ou atitude a no conjunto de condições e circunstâncias c. se isto estiver certo, então, ao menos em termos normativos, o hiato entre fato/valor parece ser transponível.