Suchergebnisse

John Rawls's famous "A Theory of Justice" firmly established itself as a classical work in the field of political philosophy. There is a huge mass of critical literature on it dealing with various details & aspects. Yet it seems nobody noticed some fatal internal inconsistency at the very basis of the project. That is, the fact that Rawlsian aim to make a theory of justice more geometrico diverges from his explicit belief in the unconditional value of justice & its conceptual independence of rationality. This belief is an essential part of the "Theory" no less than the attempts to ground it on reason. But to ground justice on reason means exactly to destroy its conceptual autonomy & unconditionality. That is the problem the article concentrates on. It shows that, firstly, Rawls makes not clear enough which ideal -- this of justice or that of rationality -- he takes as self-grounding & of the ultimate importance when compared with each other. On the one hand, the willingness to use the model of the original position stems from purely moral, that is, unreducible to utility maximizing calculations, state of consciousness, without which the persons cannot be persuaded to take part in the mental experiment & to perceive it as just. On the other hand, Rawls declares the need to ground the principles of justice & to prove that unjust behavior is also irrational, which means he questions the very belief in the binding power of Kantian morality together with his own quest for justice (If justice is nothing other than rationality, so why should we worry about it? Let's speak instead about rationality & utility alone). Secondly, we demonstrate that although a famous veil of ignorance needs because the persons under it are homini economici, that is, rational egoists without any moral sentiments, yet this veil is possible & useful only if the homini are supplied with a sense of justice, which means that the initial definition of the persons is destroyed. Moreover, in this case the veil is superfluous because the supposed sense of justice takes on the function of it. Thirdly, a contradiction in terms between two fundamental presuppositions of Rawls's theory -- Cartesian universal reason of solitary thinker on the one hand & contractarian conception of justice on the other -- is exposed: what becomes of the idea that justice is the result of a rational agreement, if each person finds the principles of justice individually & needs no communication? Fourthly, communitarian critique of Rawlsian claim to universality & impartiality is briefly presented & discussed in order to show that to be rational is not the same as to be neutral, fair & impartial. Moreover, no matter what we think about the possibility to be fair, at least the state of being both rational & fair (or just in Rawlsian sense) is unattainable. Adapted from the source document.