Hercules and the Legislator: The Problem of Justice in Contemporary Political Philosophy

Abstract

AbstractThe authors aim to reveal both the potentialities and limitations of recent attempts by Dworkin and Rawls (especially in the latter's work since the publication of A Theory of Justice) to work out a constructivist conception of right to serve as the groundwork of a rights-based theory of justice. The constructivist conception of right is promising, the authors argue, because it points beyond both teleological naturalism and instrumentalism as conceptions of right. The authors, however, find Dworkin and Rawls's constructivism to be ultimately inadequate, and argue that their project would be furthered through consideration of the constructivist aspects of Rousseau's conception of right as articulated in The Social Contract.