Suchergebnisse

Preface -- Prolegomenon : Hayek's three unsettling theses -- Beyond human nature -- Beyond moral justification -- Beyond human governance -- Three enquiries on the open society -- The rise of a normative species -- A natural history of moral order -- The "starting point" -- The egalitarian revolution -- Self-interest, reciprocity and altruism -- Internalized, enforced, social rules -- The other side of morality -- Cultural evolution -- Part I : the rise and (partial) fall of inequality -- A complex moral species -- The diversity and self-organized complexity -- Liberalism and the open society -- Understanding diversity -- Autocatalytic diversity -- Diversity and complexity -- Too much complexity? -- The morality of self-organization -- The social contract -- A self-organization model -- Moral diversity In the open society -- Part II: the complexities of self-governance -- Self-governance -- Macro control -- Macro structure -- Strategic dilemmas and polycentricity -- Meso-level goal pursuit -- Sectoral policy -- Self-governance from the bottom-up : simplifying the problems of governance -- Our moral nature and governance in the open society -- Liberal democracy -- Epilogue -- Appendix A -- Appendix B.

Acknowledgements; Introductory; Part One: Human Nature; 1. Individuality 2. Sociability: Social Life 3. Sociability: Community 4. Developmentalism; Part Two: Politics; 5. Liberty 6. Democracy 7. Economic Organisation; Concluding Remarks; Bibliography; Index

In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice--essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years--needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society--with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives--have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.

In this essay I sketch a philosophical argument for classical
liberalism based on the requirements of public reason. I argue that we can
develop a philosophical liberalism that, unlike so much recent philosophy,
takes existing social facts and mores seriously while, at the same time,
retaining the critical edge characteristic of the liberal tradition. I
argue that once we develop such an account, we are led toward a
vindication of "old" (qua classical) liberal
morality—what Benjamin Constant called the "liberties of the
moderns." A core thesis of the paper is that a regime of individual
rights is crucial to the project of public justification because it
disperses moral authority to individuals thus mitigating what I call the
"burdens of justification."