Reconstructing Rawls has one overarching goal: to reclaim Rawls for the Enlightenment—more specifically, the Prussian Enlightenment. Rawls’s so-called political turn in the 1980s, motivated by a ...newfound interest in pluralism and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has led liberalism more broadly toward cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. Robert Taylor believes that it is time to redeem A Theory of Justice’s implicit promise of a universalistic, comprehensive Kantian liberalism. Reconstructing Rawls on Kantian foundations leads to some unorthodox conclusions about justice as fairness, to be sure: for example, it yields a more civic-humanist reading of the priority of political liberty, a more Marxist reading of the priority of fair equality of opportunity, and a more ascetic or antimaterialist reading of the difference principle. It nonetheless leaves us with a theory that is still recognizably Rawlsian and reveals a previously untraveled road out of Theory—a road very different from the one Rawls himself ultimately followed.
Critics have maintained that John Rawls’s theory of justice is unrealistic and undemocratic. Andrius Gališanka’s incisive intellectual biography argues that in misunderstanding the origins and ...development of Rawls’s argument, previous narratives fail to explain the novelty of his philosophical approach and so misunderstand his political vision.
In Feminist Interpretations of John Rawls, Ruth Abbey collects eight essays responding to the work of John Rawls from a feminist perspective. An impressive introduction by the editor provides a ...chronological overview of English-language feminist engagements with Rawls from his Theory of Justice onwards. She surveys the range of issues canvassed by feminist readers of Rawls, as well as critics’ wide disagreement about the value of Rawls’ corpus for feminist purposes. The eight essays that follow testify to the continuing ambivalence among feminist readers of Rawls. From the perspectives of political theory and moral, social, and political philosophy, the essayists address particular aspects of Rawls’ work and apply it to a variety of worldly practices relating to gender inequality and the family, to the construction of disability, to the justice in everyday relationships, to human rights on an international level. The overall effect is to give a sense of the broad spectrum of possible feminist critical responses to Rawls, ranging from rejection to adoption. Aside from the editor, the contributors are Amy R. Baehr, Eileen Hunt Botting, Elizabeth Brake, Clare Chambers, Nancy J. Hirschmann, Anthony Simon Laden, Janice Richardson, and Lisa H. Schwartzman.
Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are perhaps the two most renowned and influential figures in social and political philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1990s, they had a ...famous exchange in theJournal of Philosophy. Quarreling over the merits of each other's accounts of the shape and meaning of democracy and legitimacy in a contemporary society, they also revealed how great thinkers working in different traditions read-and misread-one another's work. In this book, James Gordon Finlayson examines the Habermas-Rawls debate in context and considers its wider implications. He traces their dispute from its inception in their earliest works to the 1995 exchange and its aftermath, as well as its legacy in contemporary debates. Finlayson discusses Rawls'sPolitical Liberalismand Habermas'sBetween Facts and Norms, considering them as the essential background to the dispute and using them to lay out their different conceptions of justice, politics, democratic legitimacy, individual rights, and the normative authority of law. He gives a detailed analysis and assessment of their contributions, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their different approaches to political theory, conceptions of democracy, and accounts of religion and public reason, and he reflects on the ongoing significance of the debate.The Habermas-Rawls Debateis an authoritative account of the crucial intersection of two major political theorists and an explication of why their dispute continues to matter.
Reconstructing Rawls has one overarching goal: to
reclaim Rawls for the Enlightenment-more specifically, the Prussian
Enlightenment. Rawls's so-called political turn in the 1980s,
motivated by a ...newfound interest in pluralism and the accommodation
of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and
has led liberalism more broadly toward cultural relativism, be it
in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of
cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. Robert Taylor believes
that it is time to redeem A Theory of Justice 's implicit
promise of a universalistic, comprehensive Kantian liberalism.
Reconstructing Rawls on Kantian foundations leads to some
unorthodox conclusions about justice as fairness, to be sure: for
example, it yields a more civic-humanist reading of the priority of
political liberty, a more Marxist reading of the priority of fair
equality of opportunity, and a more ascetic or antimaterialist
reading of the difference principle. It nonetheless leaves us with
a theory that is still recognizably Rawlsian and reveals a
previously untraveled road out of Theory -a road very
different from the one Rawls himself ultimately followed.
To probe the underlying premises of a liberal political order, John Rawls felt obliged to use a philosophical method that abstracted from many of the details of ordinary life. But this very ...abstraction became a point of criticism, as it left unclear the implications of his theory for public policies and life in the real political world. Rawlsian Explorations in Religion and Applied Philosophy attempts to ferret out those implications, filling the gap between Rawls’s own empyrean heights and the really practical public policy proposals made by government planners, lobbyists, and legislators. Among the topics examined are natural rights, the morality of war, the treatment of mentally deficient humans and nonhuman sentient creatures, the controversies over legacy and affirmative action in college admissions, and the place of religious belief in a democratic society. The final chapter explores how Rawls’s own religious beliefs, as revealed in two works posthumously published in 2009, played into his formulation of his theory of justice.
John Rawls never published anything about his own religious beliefs, but after his death two texts were discovered which shed extraordinary light on the subject. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of ...Sin and Faith is Rawls's undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. The present volume includes these two texts, together with an Introduction by Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel, which discusses their relation to Rawls's published work, and an essay by Robert Merrihew Adams, which places the thesis in its theological context.
This text accepts Rawls' premises but rejects his conclusion and offers content to a debate central to United Kingdom and North American political theory. A debate is constructed in which his ...liberalism is contrasted with a libertarian socialism informed by the English theorist of guild socialism G.D.H. Cole.
