DOCSLIB.ORG

PROOF Contents

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
PROOF Contents PROOF Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors viii 1 A Pluralist History of France? 1 Julian Wright and H.S. Jones Part I The Idea of the Plural Republic 2 Liberal Republicanism after the Terror: Charles-Guillaume Théremin and Germaine de Staël 25 Andrew Jainchill 3 Liberal Pluralism in the Early Nineteenth Century: Benjamin Constant and Germaine de Staël 41 K. Steven Vincent 4 A Strange Liberalism: Freedom and Aristocracy in French Political Thought 66 Annelien de Dijn 5 P.-J. Proudhon: Pluralism, Justice and Society 85 Georges Navet 6 Pluralism’s Political Conditions: Social Realism and the Revolutionary Tradition in Pierre Leroux, P.-J. Proudhon and Alfred Fouillée 99 Michael C. Behrent 7 Utopian Pluralism in Twentieth-Century France 122 Joshua Humphreys Part II The Plural Republic 8 Electoral Antipluralism and Electoral Pluralism in France, from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to 1914 141 Nicolas Roussellier v PROOF vi Contents 9 Associations and Political Pluralism: The Effects of the Law of 1901 161 Magali della Sudda 10 Vision and Reality: Joseph Paul-Boncour and Third Republic Pluralism 179 Julian Wright 11 Regionalism, Federalism and Internationalism in First World War France 198 Carl Bouchard 12 State Sovereignty in Question: The French Jurists between the Reorganization of the International System and European Regionalism, 1920–1950 215 Jean-Michel Guieu 13 Pluralism, Parliament and the Possibility of a Sénat fédérateur, 1940–1969 231 Paul Smith 14 Epilogue: French Politics, History, and a New Perspective on the Jacobin State 248 Alain Chatriot Index 264 PROOF 1 A Pluralist History of France? Julian Wright and H.S. Jones The French exception What makes France different? More than two decades have elapsed since François Furet, Jacques Julliard, and Pierre Rosanvallon published a much-debated book which argued that the ‘French exception’ had come to an end. Writing in the wake of President Mitterrand’s re-election, they maintained that the advent of ‘the republic of the centre’, enjoying con- sensual legitimacy across the political spectrum, marked the end of the political divisions that had afflicted France ever since 1789.1 They pre- dicted that this ‘banalization of French politics’ would also slowly erode the other central characteristics that made France different: the dirigiste centralized state; France’s sense of its universal mission as the depository of the values of enlightenment rationalism; and the republican model of citizenship, which recognizes only individual and not communal iden- tities in the public square. Their book was written with an eye to the imminent celebrations of the bicentenary of the French Revolution, in which Furet, in particular, would play a leading role: indeed, in one sense La République du Centre simply reiterated the key message Furet had propounded in a famous work published a decade before: the Revo- lution is over.2 But, a generation on, the nature of French exceptionalism continues to be debated by political scientists and commentators on both sides of the Channel and on both sides of the Atlantic, which sug- gests that Furet and his collaborators were at best premature in their analysis.3 The fact that three leading intellectuals had proclaimed that France no longer had a unique mission in the world only served to focus the minds of those who insisted that that mission must be preserved. ‘I am against Maastricht because I believe in the French exception’, proclaimed the 1 PROOF 2 Pluralism and the Idea of the Republic in France dissident Gaullist Philippe Séguin, spearheading a campaign that came within a whisker of success in the referendum of September 1992.4 On the Left, Jean-Pierre Chevènement has made his career as a neo- Jacobin defender of the French way, upholding both the republican model of citizenship and the ‘cultural exception’ against the inroads of American English and Hollywood.5 But it is significant that the defence of the ‘French exception’ has become an oppositional discourse: so Chevènement has been a serial resigner, who quit Mauroy’s gov- ernment in 1983 to protest against ‘la parenthèse libérale’, Rocard’s in 1991 to protest against French participation in the first Gulf War, and Jospin’s in 2000 to protest against the recognition of the Corsican nationalist movement in the Matignon accords. That the elderly Pierre Poujade should have supported Chevènement’s presidential candidature in 2002 simply underpinned the perenni- ally dissident quality of this personification of the Jacobin tradition today.6 So, more than two decades after the authors of La République du Centre declared the demise of the Jacobin Republic, the Jacobin tradition remains very much at the heart of public controversy. Two particular aspects of the tradition dominate the polemics: the pre-eminent role of the state in the face of the rise of the global market; and the rejection of the public representation of cultural difference, in the face of ethnic diversity and the ideology of multiculturalism.7 At the heart of the Jacobin tradition stands a high conception of the state as guarantor of the equal rights of citizens, as protector of the weak against the strong, and as the sole legitimate articulator of the public interest. That has been the standard defence of the centraliza- tion of power for two centuries or more. Since the Second World War, the importance of the state in ensuring equal and extensive social rights for citizens has acquired particular importance and indeed become a new shibboleth, defining a distinctively French ‘social model’ which since the Thatcher-Reagan era has stood in marked contrast to Anglo- American practice. Yet the role of the state has been brought into question more than ever since Nicolas Sarkozy’s election to the pres- idency in 2007. His apparent eagerness to confront the trade unions and to challenge their conquests in the field of social legislation – gen- erous public sector pensions, early retirement ages, and the celebrated 35-hour week instituted by Martine Aubry in 1998 – has given renewed life to the debate on the viability of the French social model. Beyond France, the French model of the state, which for generations has exer- cised compelling powers of both attraction and repulsion, is increasingly PROOF A Pluralist History? 3 viewed as unsustainable; all the more so since the financial crash of 2008 and the Eurozone crisis, following which most western states started to rethink the limits of state action. Meanwhile the French state continues to strike a distinctive and con- troversial posture in resisting the multiculturalist campaign for group rights, and especially the formal public recognition of the collective rights of ethnic and religious minorities. ‘France is a country in which there are no minorities’, declared the French government, when request- ing a reservation on the article on minority rights at the time of the ratification of the United Nations International Convention on Civil and Political Rights in 1966. That position, though challenged, remains substantively in place today. In 1991, the Haut Conseil à l’Intégration reaffirmed its belief that the French constitution, based as it was on a ‘logic of equality’, excluded any possibility of ‘an insti- tutional recognition of minorities’; and for the same reason the French government rejected the 1999 European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages.8 What is the French ‘state-model’? In current debates, the term masks a cluster of diverse characteristics: a ‘large’ and over-extended state; an inflexible bureaucracy; and a particular way of conceiving the relation- ship between state and citizen which problematizes the place of ethnic communities, and other kinds of communal identity, within the mod- ern republic. But there seem to be three essential components of the model: administrative centralization; the contested legitimacy of insti- tutions of civil society; and an abstract model of citizenship, in which the citizen’s identity as a French citizen, when he/she acts as a citizen in the public space, is held to supplant other collective identities. To use two much-employed pieces of shorthand, the Jacobin model of the state is the antithesis of a pluralistic understanding of citizenship and civil society. The central aim of this book is to question the assumption that the Jacobin voice is the sole authentic voice of the French republican tra- dition. In fact, while ‘Jacobinism’ was certainly a French invention, so too, in some respects, was its antithesis, ‘pluralism’. Pluralist political thought, in Britain and elsewhere, was born of a reflection on French historical experience; but it was also, crucially, nourished by French intellectual traditions. Some of these traditions were explicitly hostile to republicanism; but French pluralist doctrine was also developed within the republican tradition. These republican pluralists sought to develop an alternative model of the French republic, one that did not imply the defence of the centralized state or the crushing of communal identities PROOF 4 Pluralism and the Idea of the Republic in France in civil society. The evolution of this alternative republicanism is the focus of the essays that follow. Conceptual framework: Jacobinism and pluralism ‘Jacobinism’ and ‘pluralism’ are, then, the key concepts that frame this book; but both are problematical concepts. They are used in the aca- demic literature, but they are not primarily scientific concepts, but terms of art deployed by French political actors in their discussions
Load more

Recommended publications
  • John Rawls' Theory of Justice As Fairness
    ANDREAS FOLLESDAL 20121025 John Rawls' Theory of Justice as Fairness Approximately as appears in Guttorm Floistad, ed. Philosophy of Justice, Contemporary Philosophy, Springer 2014, 311-328 When do citizens have a moral duty to obey the government and support the institutions of society?1 This question is central to political philosophy. One of the 20 century's main response was John Rawls' theory of justice, "Justice as fairness", in the book A Theory of Justice, published 1971. The book Justice as Fairness was an improved and shorter presentation of Rawls' theory, published 2001 with editorial support by Erin Kelly, one of his former students. When asked how rights, duties, benefits and burdens should be distributed, the ideals of freedom and equality often conflict with each other. In domestic politics we often see such conflicts between calls for more individual freedoms and schemes for universal, egalitarian welfare arrangements. It is such conflict between liberty and equality that Rawls attempts to reconcile with his theory of justice. There are three main steps in Rawls' theory of justice. He assumes certain features characteristic of free societies, as well as some specific ideas about how society and people should be understood. Rawls believes that even people with different beliefs can agree with some principles to resolve basic conflicts over the distributional effects of social institutions. Secondly, he draws on the contract theory tradition in political philosophy, arguing that consent in some sense is necessary for the legitimate exercise of state power. Based on the requirement of consent, in a third step Rawls presents certain principles for a just society that citizens should be expected to support.
    [Show full text]
  • The Principle of Solidarity : a Restatement of John Rawls' Law Of
    DISSERTATION: THE PRINCIPLE OF SOLIDARITY: A RESTATEMENT OF JOHN RAWLS´ LAW OF PEOPLES ZUR ERLANGUNG DES AKADEMISCHEN GRADES DOCTOR PHILOSOPHIAE (DR. PHIL) VON MILICA TRIFUNOVIĆ EINGEREICHT IM DEZEMBER 2011. AN DER PHILOSOPHISCHEN FAKULTÄT I DER HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN PRÄSIDENT DER HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN: PROF. DR. JAN-HENDRIK OLBERTZ DEKAN: PROF. MICHAEL SEADLE GUTACHTER: 1. PROF. DR. VOLKER GERHARDT 2. PROF. DR. WULF KELLERWESSEL TAG DER MÜNDLICHEN PRÜFUNG: 20. JUNI 2012. 1 CONTENT CHAPTER ONE.............................................................................................................................................5 Instead of Introduction: Global Justice Debate- Conceptions and Misconceptions........................................5 1. Global Justice Debate – Conceptions and Misconceptions............................................................5 1.1. CONCEPTUAL ANALYSES....................................................................................................6 1.1.1. Aristotelian Paradigm................................................................................................7 1.1.2. Rawlsian Paradigm ...................................................................................................9 1.1.3. Aristotelian and Rawlsian Paradigm in A Global Context .......................................13 1.2. METHODOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ...........................................................................................21 1.2.1. Political Constructivism in a Global Context............................................................22
    [Show full text]
  • Aristotle, Kant, JS Mill and Rawls Raphael Cohen-Almagor
    1 On the Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics: Aristotle, Kant, JS Mill and Rawls Raphael Cohen-Almagor Ethics, Medicine and Public Health (Available online 22 November 2017). Abstract This article aims to trace back some of the theoretical foundations of medical ethics that stem from the philosophies of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls. The four philosophers had in mind rational and autonomous human beings who are able to decide their destiny, who pave for themselves the path for their own happiness. It is argued that their philosophies have influenced the field of medical ethics as they crafted some very important principles of the field. I discuss the concept of autonomy according to Kant and JS Mill, Kant’s concepts of dignity, benevolence and beneficence, Mill’s Harm Principle (nonmaleficence), the concept of justice according to Aristotle, Mill and Rawls, and Aristotle’s concept of responsibility. Key words: Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, autonomy, beneficence, benevolence, dignity, justice, nonmaleficence, responsibility, John Rawls Introduction What are the philosophical foundations of medical ethics? The term ethics is derived from Greek. ἦθος: Noun meaning 'character' or 'disposition'. It is used in Aristotle to denote those aspects of one's character that, through appropriate moral training, develop into virtues. ἦθος is related to the adjective ἠθικός denoting someone or something that relates to disposition, e.g., a philosophical study on character.[1] 2 Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society. It involves developing, systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour. The Hippocratic Oath (c.
    [Show full text]
  • Korsgaard.John Rawls's Theory of the Good
    John Rawls’s Theory of the Good Christine M. Korsgaard I. Introduction In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls works out a theory of the good, with a view to establishing three conclusions important to his theory of justice. The first is that his chosen unit of distribution, primary goods, are indeed good, and good in the way he defines them to be— they are things that citizens have reason to want no matter what else they want. The second is that it is good-for a person to be a just person, at least if the person lives in a well-ordered society, one that is effectively regulated by a publicly accepted conception of justice.1 Importantly, Rawls, like Plato before him, aims to show, not that being a just person promotes our interests independently defined, but that being a just person is good as an end, a good thing to be for its own sake. And the third is that a just society in Rawls’s sense is also a good society for its citizens to live in—again, not because it promotes our given aims, but for its own sake. Those last two claims—that a just society is good-for its citizens and that it is good to be a just person if you live in one, are needed in order to establish what Rawls call “congruence,” the harmony of the right and the good.2 That in turn is necessary to show that a society under Rawls’s conception of justice would be, as he calls it “stable”: that is, it would generate its own support, in the sense that those who lived under the Rawlsian system of justice would find reason 1 I have hyphenated good-for (and bad-for) since one of the issues treated in this essay will be the distinctness of, the relations between, the idea of “good” and the idea of “good-for.” 2 Rawls, A Theory of Justice.
    [Show full text]
  • Moral Theories Course Leader
    PHIL 101: Conceptual Foundations of Bioethics: Moral Theories Course Leader: Stavroula Tsinorema Semester: 1st (7 ECTS) Course Type: Required Objectives: The aims of this course unit are (a) to bring students in contact with the theoretical basis of Bioethics, through training in the methodologies and analytical tools of moral reasoning, (b) to provide them with the basic categories which show the conceptual links between the frameworks of moral philosophy and normative bioethical reasoning, (c) to equip them with the appropriate theoretical frameworks in order to be able to investigate critically and, where possible, to resolve specific moral problems deriving in biomedical research, its application in clinical contexts, health care and environmental policy. The overall aim is to enable students to develop core skills for the conduct of normative analysis and reasoning in Bioethics. Content: The normative resources for moral argument and justification in Bioethics are found in moral philosophy and philosophical theories of ethics. This course unit will survey some of the principle philosophical approaches in addressing a number of bioethical controversies and bring appropriate perspectives from ethical theories to bear on case studies in Bioethics. Topics include: 1) Philosophical ethics and its relation to Bioethics. 2) Classical approaches. Ethics and metaphysics. Ontological approaches to ethics. 3) Modern classical approaches to ethics. Theories of Scottish Enlightenment. Moral sentiments and the ethics of work: David Hume and Adam Smith. 4) Immanuel Kant: The ethics of form. 5) Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism. 6) Contemporary moral theories: - Contractarian and constructivist theories. John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Onora O’ Neill Postgraduate Prospectus 17 - Virtue ethics, ethics of care, feminism, communitarianism 7) Theories of a deflatory kind and moral scepticism.
    [Show full text]
  • Quong-Left-Libertarianism.Pdf
    The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 19, Number 1, 2011, pp. 64–89 Symposium: Ownership and Self-ownership Left-Libertarianism: Rawlsian Not Luck Egalitarian Jonathan Quong Politics, University of Manchester HAT should a theory of justice look like? Any successful answer to this Wquestion must find a way of incorporating and reconciling two moral ideas. The first is a particular conception of individual freedom: because we are agents with plans and projects, we should be accorded a sphere of liberty to protect us from being used as mere means for others’ ends. The second moral idea is that of equality: we are moral equals and as such justice requires either that we receive equal shares of something—of whatever it is that should be used as the metric of distributive justice—or else requires that unequal distributions can be justified in a manner that is consistent with the moral equality of persons. These twin ideas—liberty and equality—are things which no sound conception of justice can properly ignore. Thus, like most political philosophers, I take it as given that the correct conception of justice will be some form of liberal egalitarianism. A deep and difficult challenge for all liberal egalitarians is to determine how the twin values of freedom and equality can be reconciled within a single theory of distributive justice. Of the many attempts to achieve this reconciliation, left-libertarianism is one of the most attractive and compelling. By combining the libertarian commitment to full (or nearly full) self-ownership with an egalitarian principle for the ownership of natural resources, left- libertarians offer an account of justice that appears firmly committed both to individual liberty, and to an egalitarian view of how opportunities or advantages must be distributed.
    [Show full text]
  • John Rawls' 'Justice As Fairness' and the Demandingness Problem
    Acta Scientiarum http://periodicos.uem.br/ojs/acta ISSN on-line: 1807-8656 Doi: 10.4025/actascihumansoc .v41i1.45292 POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY John Rawls’ ‘justice as fairness’ and the demandingness problem Victor Cruz e Silva Programa de Pós-graduação em Desenvolvimento Econômico, Universidade Federal do Paraná, Av. Prefeito Lothario Meissner, 632, Sala 24, 80210-170, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT. John Rawls (1921-2002) was a liberal philosopher whose theory was, in the mid-twentieth century, the default mainstream political philosophy. His main theoretical construct is called justice as fairness. This study departs from the perception that there is an unexplored internal ethical tension within Rawls’ justice as fairness. We argue that Rawls’ deontological compass jeopardizes his reconciliation of liberalism and egalitarianism. Our objective is, accordingly, to elucidate the demandingness problem related to deontological ethics and how this affects Rawls’ ideal endeavors. This so-called demandingness problem was originally conceived in reference to consequentialist ethics. Accordingly, the alleged tension within Rawls’ system will be briefly contrasted with the controversy regarding John Stuart Mill’s (1806- 1873) system of political economy usually noticed by the literature, in which the demandingness beams from the necessarily consequentialist nature of utilitarianism. Our conclusion is that, whereas utilitarianism is necessarily consequentialist, and, therefore, demanding, Rawls’ system does not integrate inevitably demanding rules of behavior. It is Rawls’ deontological background that promotes the tension between liberalism and egalitarianism in his reasoning. Keywords: deontological ethics; utilitarianism; John Stuart Mill; liberalism; egalitarianism. A ‘justiça como equidade’ de Rawls e o problema da exigência RESUMO.
    [Show full text]
  • Why Rawlsian Liberalism Has Failed and How Proudhonian Anarchism Is the Solution
    A Thesis entitled Why Rawlsian Liberalism has Failed and How Proudhonian Anarchism is the Solution by Robert Pook Submitted to the graduate faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy __________________________________ Dr. Benjamin Pryor, Committee Chair __________________________________ Dr. Ammon Allred, Committee Member __________________________________ Dr. Charles V. Blatz, Committee Member __________________________________ Dr. Patricia Komuniecki, Dean College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo August 2011 An abstract of Why Rawlsian Liberalism has Failed and How Proudhonian Anarchism is the Solution by Robert Pook Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy University of Toledo August 2011 Liberalism has failed. The paradox in modern society between capitalism and democracy has violated the very principles of liberty, equality, and social justice that liberalism bases its ideology behind. Liberalism, in directly choosing capitalism and private property has undermined its own values and ensured that the theoretical justice, in which its foundation is built upon, will never be. This piece of work will take the monumental, landmark, liberal work, A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, as its foundation to examine the contradictory and self-defeating ideological commitment to both capitalism and democracy in liberalism. I will argue that this commitment to both ideals creates an impossibility of justice, which is at the heart of, and is the driving force behind liberal theory. In liberalism‟s place, I will argue that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon‟s anarchism, as outlined in, Property is Theft, offers an actual ideological model to achieving the principles which liberalism has set out to achieve, through an adequate and functioning model of justice.
    [Show full text]
  • Justice As Fairness: a Commentary on Rawls's New Theory of Justice
    Vanderbilt Law Review Volume 26 Issue 3 Issue 3 - Symposium on Race Relations Article 13 4-1973 Justice as Fairness: A Commentary on Rawls's New Theory of Justice Gilbert Merritt Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr Part of the Law and Politics Commons, and the Law and Society Commons Recommended Citation Gilbert Merritt, Justice as Fairness: A Commentary on Rawls's New Theory of Justice, 26 Vanderbilt Law Review 665 (1973) Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol26/iss3/13 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Vanderbilt Law Review by an authorized editor of Scholarship@Vanderbilt Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Justice as Fairness: A Commentary on Rawls's New Theory of Justice Gilbert Merritt* I. INTRODUCTION A Theory of Justice,' John Rawls's new book on social and legal philosophy, appears likely to become a monument of systematic thought comparable to Locke's Second Treatise of Government and Mill's Utilitarianism. It provides answers systematically to the most difficult questions of our time and promises to shape the thought and action of men for many years. Daniel Bell, a noted social scientist, has said that in Rawls "we can observe the development of a political philosophy which will go far to shape the last part of the 20th Century, as the doctrines of Locke and Smith molded the 19th."' 2 Charles Fried, the noted legal philosopher, recently wrote: This book in my view is the most important work in moral and social philoso- phy published since World War II.
    [Show full text]
  • Rawls' Theory of Justice: an Analysis
    IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 22, Issue 4, Ver. 1 (April. 2017) PP 40-43 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE: AN ANALYSIS Sampurnaa Dutta Guest Lecturer, Department of Political Science, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong ABSTRACT: John Rawls was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition whose theory of justice led to the revival of interest in political philosophy in modern times. In his celebrated work, A Theory of Justice, he asserted that a good society is characterised by a number of virtues. Justice is the first virtue of a good society. Though a seminal work in the discipline of Political Science, Rawls’ theory has been criticised by various schools of thought. This paper makes an attempt to briefly study the theory of justice and make a critical analysis of the same. On a closer analysis, the diverse criticisms of Rawls’ theory seem to be based on biased interpretations of his theory. In fact Rawls has tried to combine different value systems in order to arrive at his theory of justice. Some tenets of these value systems are thought to be mutually incompatible with each other. Indeed Rawls’ theory of justice represents the convergence of libertarianism, egalitarianism and communitarianism. I. JOHN RAWLS: AN INTRODUCTION John Rawls was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition whose theory of justice led to the revival of interest in political philosophy in modern times. Rawls himself developed his thinking in the liberal tradition, and followed the methodology of social contract-particularly John Locke’s version of the theory-to arrive at the principles of justice.
    [Show full text]
  • Corruption* David Schmidtz
    Revision of an essay appearing in Performance & Progress, ed. S. Rangan, Oxford Press (2015): 490-64. Corruption* David Schmidtz This essay works toward an anatomy of corruption. Section I discusses the corrupting influence of concentrated as opposed to dispersed power. Section II argues that although greed may be the paradigmatically rotten motive, it is but one among several corrupting vices. One general cost of rotten motives, Section II concludes, is a loss of self-awareness. Section III argues that this loss of self-awareness can afflict organizations as well as individual persons, and for an oddly similar reason: the downfall of many an institution involves internal corruption that leads to a loss of any sense of mission on the part of the organization, such that a corporation qua agent falls apart. Section IV argues that there is a wrong way of striving to avoid this loss of self-awareness and maintain unified corporate agency: namely, by grasping for ever more concentrated top-down power. In general, nothing good comes from concentrating power at the top, because it treats as spectators or pawns those agents on the ground who need to play, and play well, if a society is to prosper. Section V closes by articulating an implicit contrast between goals of justice and of conflict resolution. We have compelling reason to treat the latter, not the former, as the first virtue of social institutions. Otherwise, in the name of justice, we systematically give our leaders more power than we properly can afford. I. CONCENTRATED POWER: THE CURE THAT IS THE DISEASE Which social arrangements have a history of fostering progress and prosperity? One quick answer, falsely attributed to Adam Smith, holds that we are guided as if by an invisible hand to do what builds the wealth of nations.
    [Show full text]
  • Rawls and the Kantian Ethos*
    Polity . Volume 39, Number 1 . January 2007 r 2007 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/07 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/polity Rawls and the Kantian Ethos* Nicholas Tampio Hamilton College John Rawls had a life-long interest in Kant. To provide a new perspective on Rawls’s political thinking, to illuminate Kant’s legacy for political theory, and to contribute to current debates about the Enlightenment, I track how Rawls interprets and transforms Kant’s legacy. In this essay, I show how Rawls reconceptualizes four key Kantian activities: the identification of the problem, the engagement with common sense, the construction of principles, and the authentication of principles. I defend Rawls from the charge—made by Allan Bloom, Michael Sandel, and Allen Wood, among others—that Rawls fundamentally misunderstands or misuses Kant. The basis of my defense is that Rawls considers a critical intellectual sensibility (or ethos), rather than a specific doctrine (e.g., the categorical imperative), as the most valuable component of Kant’s legacy. Polity (2007) 39, 79–102. doi:10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300044 Keywords Rawls; Kant; Enlightenment; ethos Nicholas Tampio teaches political theory at Hamilton College. He researches the legacy of the Enlightenment in contemporary political theory. He can be reached at [email protected]. Introduction John Rawls, it is well known, was a life-long student of Kant.1 One of the most famous and controversial sections of A Theory of Justice (1971) is entitled, ‘‘The *This essay grew out of seminars on Kant and Rawls at Johns Hopkins University with William E.
    [Show full text]