Political Conception Of Justice Research Articles

On the reasonability of reasoning with the religiously unreasonable

ABSTRACT Political liberals argue that religious citizens should exercise religious restraint: they ought, at least as a rule, not to rely directly on religious reasons in public political debates, and should instead draw only from the contents of a ‘reasonable’, secular political conception of justice. Political liberals hold that direct religious reasoners’ who fail to follow this rule fail to be ‘reasonable’ (in a technical sense) and contend that liberal polities may thus dismiss their religiously-motivated objections to otherwise justified democratic laws. However, I argue that political liberals’ own principles of ‘reasonability’ forbid such a dismissal. Those principles themselves, I argue, require liberal polities to offer direct religious reasoners who are reasonable in the basic, colloquial sense of being fair-minded and reciprocitous, deep reasons—that speak to their comprehensive religious doctrines—for why they should accept and reason from a ‘reasonable’, political conception of justice. I call the position which requires such deep justification of a ‘reasonable’, political conception of justice Deep Inclusivism, and draw on the work of Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic political thinker, to help illustrate what a fair-minded, reciprocitous religious reasoner might look like.

Epistemic Rationality in Political Theory

The paper presents a brief analysis of the procedural approach towards constructing liberal political conceptions of justice and democracy. Treatment of J. Rawls’s evolution shows the negative consequences of abandoning external substantive criteria for theory evaluation, including efficiency, justification, truth. It also offers justification for the “epistemic turn” in contemporary political theory. The return of classical epistemological set of tools will help to strengthen the justification and legitimation of philosophical and political conceptions of justice and democracy by overcoming the key limitations of the procedural approach.

Rawlsian Jurisprudence and the Limits of Democracy

The present article analyses John Rawls’s advocacy of judicial review via a close reading of Rawls’s discussions of his “principles of paternalism” and his “four-stage sequence” in A Theory of Justice (1971). The article surveys Rawls’s political “principles of paternalism,” the limits, checks, and constraints he imposes on majority rule and civic participation, and finally the role Rawls assigns to courts, judges, and judicial review within his political conception of justice. Following upon this survey, this article contends that the particular relations of supremacy and domination (Herrschafts-Verhältnisse) at which Rawls’s political thought aims are judicial or juridical—the supremacy of judges over citizens, of courts over legislatures, and of the judiciary over participatory politics.

Rawls's juridical constructivism revisited

This paper offers an in-depth analysis of the concepts of law and rights in John Rawls’s political conception of justice. After consulting Rawls’s texts for his account of law and rights, as well as the secondary literature on these texts, the meta-juridical foundation of the Rawlsian concepts of law and rights is articulated. I suggest that Rawls’s argument for the priority of right over ideas of the good is central to an adequate understanding of Rawlsian juridical constructivism. I then explore Rawls’s conception of what may be referred to as “political natural rights”, especially regarding certain inadequacies in Ronald Dworkin’s and Rex Martin’s assessment of the Rawlsian structural locus and origin of these rights. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the place of Rawls’s concepts of law and rights on the conceptual map of contemporary juridical-philosophical debates.

Habermas on Rawls and the normative foundations of democracy

The debate between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls concerns the question of how to do political philosophy under conditions of cultural pluralism, if the aim of political philosophy is to uncover the normative foundation of a modern liberal democracy. Rawls’s political liberalism tries to bypass the problem of pluralism, using the intellectual device of the veil of ignorance, and yet paradoxically at the same time it treats it as something given and as an arbiter of justification within the political conception of justice. Habermas argues that Rawls not only incorrectly operationalizes the moral point of view from which we discern what is just but also fails to capture the specificity of democracy which is given by internal relations between politics and law. This deprives Rawls’s political philosophy of the conceptual tools needed to articulate the normative foundation of democracy.

The Great escape? A liberal perspective on assisted suicide for prisoners

Summary Do prisoners evade punishment should they voluntarily end their lives while serving a prison sentence? In order to provide a meaningful answer to this question, one must first carefully unpack what is meant by sentence evasion, why it is wrong, and what its philosophical underpinnings are. To this purpose, I draw insights from liberal political philosophy and turn to the ideas of John Stuart Mill and John Rawls. I argue that the philosophical origins of the contemporary argument that prisoners evade their sentences through suicide can be found in Mill's argument against the abolition of capital punishment. Mill's argument rests on the assumption that death is preferable to life-long incarceration. I argue that this assumption is incompatible with a political conception of justice because it cannot be held in accordance with the tenets of public reason, an idea put forward by Rawls but also tacitly endorsed by Mill. To do so, I argue that the argument of sentence evasion concerns what Rawls calls a constitutional essential; a fundamental element that orders political institutions and their subsequent distribution of rights and liberties. In virtue of their fundamental character, constitutional essentials are to be decided through the use of public reasons; reasons that lie outside of citizens’ particular comprehensive worldviews. I show that the assumption that death is preferable to incarceration cannot be sustained outside of a particularistic doctrine regarding the nature of death. The argument must therefore be rejected and cannot constitute a basis for denying suicide assistance to inmates.

Under(mining) the Kondhs: a normative critique of the case of Niyamgiri

ABSTRACT The article explores the broader question of how to assess socioeconomic development from a normative perspective, especially in relation to indigenous peoples, by perusing a case study. The case of Niyamgiri indicates how mining of natural resources for the sake of economic development negatively impacts the lives of the Kondhs, a community of indigenous peoples who reside in the region. Most conversations regarding it have revolved around the issues of displacement, cultural genocide, debilitating ecological effects in the region, and a social movement's ability to thwart overtures of global capital. I choose John Rawls's account of distributive justice to analyse the case because it is a political conception of justice, which can accommodate claims that arise even from the premises of culture. I use it to argue that the practice of development evinced by the case fails to meet the requirements of distributive justice. In my analysis, I show that development in Niyamgiri denies its stakeholders their basic liberties, fails to provide them with fair equality of opportunity, and does not adhere to egalitarian standards of distribution reflected by the difference principle, leading ultimately to a denial of their self-respect.

Prvenstvo prava pred idejama dobra

U radu se analizira pojam prava u političkoj koncepciji pravednosti Johna Rawlsa. Nakon analize Rawlsovih relevantnih tekstova koji sadrže određene sastavnice argumenta o pojmu prava kao institucije, pravnog sustava, pravnih normi i pravâ osoba, kao i sekundarne literature o tim tekstovima, istražuje se metajuridičko utemeljenje Rawlsove koncepcije prava. Potom se argumentira kako je Rawlsov argument za prvenstvo ispravnoga pred idejama dobra ključna teza za ispravno shvaćanje njegova pravnoga konstruktivizma. Utvrđuje se kako se u njegovoj misli može s punim pravom govoriti o, tzv. prvenstvu prava pred idejama dobra. Analizira se i Rawlsovo shvaćanje prirodnoga prava. Zaključno se vrednuju rezultati članka s obzirom na pitanje o smještanju Rawlsovog pojma prava u suvremene pravno-filozofske debate.

LIBERDADE: A CONDIÇÃO DE POSSIBILIDADE DO PLURALISMO A PARTIR DO PENSAMENTO DE RAWLS

Como estabelecer normas de convivência entre um indivíduo que crê em algum dogma de fé (religiosidade) e outro que não possui crença religiosa? O presente ensaio propõe que o conceito de liberdade seja o fundamento radical de uma sociedade plural. A partir de John Locke e John Stuart Mill se reconstrói o conceito de liberdade, expondo os principais argumentos do liberalismo clássico. Com John Rawls, a liberdade torna-se o primeiro princípio de justiça de uma sociedade bem-ordenada, fazendo parte da razão pública e de uma concepção política de justiça. Assim, defende-se a liberdade como condição necessária do pluralismo, ou seja, como fundamento radical de uma sociedade plural.

Democracia em tempos sombrios

O presente artigo visa desenvolver uma análise acerca da proposição de John Rawls acerca de uma concepção política de justiça como equidade com o objetivo de fundamentar uma ideia de sociedade liberal bem ordenada a partir do pensamento de Giorgio Agamben. Desse modo, buscar-se-á apresentar uma leitura crítica ao liberalismo jurídico-político por reafirmar a exceção como regra. Essa constatação coloca em xeque a própria estrutura da proposta liberal, pois encobre a matriz oculta do poder soberano, a relação de exceção em seu caráter primigênio – que demarca o poder de vida e sobre a vida (nua). Dessa forma, pretende-se traçar algumas diferenciações entre ambas as propostas, ressaltando que o exercício de (re)pensar a política que vem coloca em questão os conceitos ainda vigentes na configuração da comunidade política ocidental que se pretende democrática, tais como: soberania, cidadania, direitos humanos, contrato social.
 Palavras-chave: Rawls. Liberalismo. Agamben. Vida nua. Política que vem.

Political Justice: Levinas Contra Aristotle

In this paper, I argue that two radically different conceptions of political justice can be derived from the work of Aristotle and Emmanuel Levinas—notions of justice that are indeed directly opposed. Aristotle defines justice in terms of considerations of moderation, prudence, and measure, where the virtuous actor is supposed to demonstrate aspects of character and perform acts that are neither deficient nor excessive; yet the ethics of Levinas, as instantiated in justice, is a demand that responding to the needs of others not be limited by moderate considerations, but can precisely be realized as an exorbitant and anarchic assumption of responsibility. It thus becomes of decisive importance for both a thinking of the political, and political praxis, in determining which conception of justice is found to be more compelling. I illustrate the stakes of this difference with reference to the politics of asylum, and in particular, a discussion of the historical case of the Kindertransport.

‘The kids are alright’: political liberalism, leisure time, and childhood

Interest in the nature and importance of ‘childhood goods’ recently has emerged within philosophy. Childhood goods, roughly, are things (including kinds of activities) that are good for persons qua children independent of any contribution to the good of persons qua adults (although they may also be valuable in this way). According to Colin Macleod, John Rawls’s political conception of justice as fairness rests upon an adult-centered ‘agency assumption’ and thus is incapable of incorporating childhood goods into its content. Macleod concludes that because of this, justice as fairness cannot be regarded as a complete conception of distributive justice. In this paper I provide a political liberal response to Macleod’s argument by advancing three claims. First, I propose that political liberalism should treat leisure time as a distinct ‘primary good.’ Second, I suggest that leisure time should be distributed via (a) the ‘basic needs principle’ and (b) the ‘difference principle’ for all citizens over the course of their complete lives, including their childhoods. Third, the provision of leisure time in this way supports the realization of childhood goods for citizens.

Liberation Politics as a (New) Socialist Politics

Liberation philosophy was born from radical, socialist roots. Yet recent developments by major figures in the tradition, including Enrique Dussel, would appear to position the movement unhelpfully closer to liberalism. The present article argues that this is a misconception, and that Liberation philosophy rather suggests a new ideal for conceptions of political justice, one that also helpfully avoids a number of common objections that dog traditional socialist proposals. The work of John Rawls is used as a dialogical counter point to suggest the relative merits for the new approach Liberation philosophy suggest for socialism.

Exemplarity in the Public Realm

The role of exemplarity in the public realm is explored from a threefold angle. After introducing briefly the notion of exemplarity as distinct from “being an example of,” as possessed of a normative force resting on its potential for disclosure, and as connected with a sense of the human flourishing, two junctures are singled out at which exemplarity plays a significant role in contemporary political theory. First, John Rawls's notion of the reasonable, understood as a quality of the political actor and as a standard for public reason, and especially as it occurs in the phrase “most reasonable for us,” predicated of justice as fairness as a political conception of justice, is shown to presuppose the normativity of exemplarity if “public reason” is to remain distinct from “practical reason.” Second, in his recently published The Civil Rights Revolution (2014 – the third volume of We the People), Bruce Ackerman shows that 20th-century “constitutional moments,” starting from the New Deal, no longer follow the scripted Article Five-based path of constitutional amendment. They are ignited and unfold on the basis of “landmark statutes” (such as the New Deal legislation, the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act) and judicial “exemplary superprecedents” (such as Brown or Loving). This reconstruction of the new dynamics of constitutional change in US recent history prompts the question about the nature of “landmarkness” of both congressional statutes and Supreme Court pronouncements. The paper highlights the relation of landmarkness to exemplarity. Third, exemplarity in the public realm is then contrasted with other forms of exemplarity. Its specific nature is highlighted and four versions of public exemplarity are distinguished: exemplarity of the deed; of the personality; of a legal notion; of a constitutional order.

O DIREITO DE PROPRIEDADE E JUSTIÇA

O objetivo do texto é justificar o direito de propriedade como direito fundamental individual e explicitar seu conteúdo. Locke, Hegel e Rawls são referidos como fontes históricas consagradas para esse intuito. Locke, pela tese de que o trabalho fundamenta a propriedade; Hegel, pela estreita vinculação entre propriedade e liberdade; Rawls, por ter enumerado a propriedade entre os direitos fundamentais que compõem o primeiro princípio de sua concepção política de justiça. Justifica-se, com isso, ser o direito de propriedade um elemento constitucional essencial.

Notions of justice

This paper compares the conception of justice grounded on the liberal political thought and the Chinese notion of justice deeply rooted in Confucian and Legalist theories from the standpoint of the political culture they each supports. It argues that whereas the former supports the liberal culture marked by the plurality of reasonable doctrines and by seeing persons as free and equal, the latter supports an authoritarian culture based on a dogmatic, comprehensive moral doctrine. Such cultural differences have made it difficult for the Chinese elite holding a Confucian view to negotiate and appreciate the political conception of justice as fairness. This paper suggests that it is important for a modern state to formulate philosophies that accommodate the plurality of diverse and often incompatible doctrines and also to think about justice in procedural terms. For China to achieve this requires a change of political culture.

When Public Reason Fails Us: Convergence Discourse as Blood Oath

Public officials in John Rawls's well-ordered society face an assurance problem. They prefer to act in accordance with the political conception of justice, but only if they are assured that others will. On Paul Weithman's influential interpretation, Rawls attempts to solve this problem by claiming that public reason is an assurance mechanism. There are several problems with Rawls's solution: Public reason talk is too cheap to facilitate assurance, it is difficult to know when particular utterances express public reasons, and the requirements of public reason conflict with the fact of reasonable pluralism. We argue that convergence discourse—not public reason—solves the assurance problem by being a costly signal that indicates commitment to the political conception. This solution has none of Rawls's problems and has an interesting corollary: As diversity increases in society, so too does society's ability to solve the assurance problem. In short, the more diversity the better.

Vallier, Kevin. Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation.New York: Routledge, 2014. Pp. 286. $145.00 (cloth).

Vallier, Kevin. <i>Liberal Politics and Public Faith: Beyond Separation</i>.New York: Routledge, 2014. Pp. 286. $145.00 (cloth).

Are Rawlsian Considerations of Corporate Governance Illiberal? A Reply to Singer

ABSTRACT:Singer has recently argued that questions related to corporate governance are beyond the reach of Rawls’s political conception of justice. This is because justice applies to the basic structure of society, understood as society’s legally coercive structures, and because corporate governance cannot be considered part of this structure in political liberalism. This commentary challenges the second part of the argument. First, it suggests that the criterion used to exclude corporate governance from the basic structure—whether employees can exit economic organizations—is not conclusive for corporate governance, notably as institutionalized in corporate law. Second, even if the focus were on corporate governance, it would still be possible to argue that it legally coerces citizens, if not employees, in a relevant way. Thus, the argument is not successful in demonstrating that political liberalism goes beyond its legitimate boundaries when considering that aspects of corporate governance may be matters of justice.

Rawlsian Liberalism, Justice for the Worst Off, and the Limited Capacity of Political Institutions

This article argues that Rawlsian liberal political institutions are incapable of ensuring that the basic welfare needs of the worst off are met. This argument consists of two steps. First, I show that institutions are incapable of ensuring that the basic needs of the worst off are met without pursuing certain non-taxation-based courses of action that are designed to alter the work choices of citizens (NTMs). Second, I argue that such actions are not permissible for Rawlsian institutions. It follows that a state governed by a Rawls-type political conception of justice is parasitic on the willingness of citizens to be sufficiently motivated by concern for the worst off, but it cannot require or even encourage them to be so motivated.