Conference paper
RAWLS’ LIBERAL UTOPIA
Hrvoje Cvijanović
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The author looks into the design of Rawls’ liberal project via his idea of justice as the primary virtue of social institutions. Rawls thinks that what is just must have primacy over what is good, by which he has revitalized the deontological ethics. Rawls’ deontological liberalism is based on the conviction that a plural society is possible if we stick to the principle of the primacy of what is just and by this limit the various concepts of the good. In his critique, Sandel highlights the pro and contra arguments of the deontological ethics, but concludes that it is impossible to save Rawls’ deontological liberalism since it cannot be consistently derived. John Gray’s criticism of Rawls is threefold: first, Gray claims that Rawls’ concept of the individual is taken out of its cultural-historical context and thus represents a vestige of the Enlightenment project fallacy; second, Gray argues that Rawls fell for the misconception of the primacy of the law over the good, because law without substance provided by a concept of the good would be hollow; and third, Gray says that Rawls substituted the sphere of the political by law, which makes his political liberalism essentially anti-political. The author concludes that it is not essential for the idea of justice to occupy a privileged position as the ultimate valorization of a society, and in that sense it cannot be imperative and obligatory.
Keywords
justice; primacy of the law over the good; deontological liberalism; pluralism
Hrčak ID:
23296
URI
Publication date:
26.8.2003.
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