Filozofska istraživanja, Vol. 41 No. 4, 2021.
Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.21464/fi41404
Development of Human Capacities and the Legitimacy of State Intervention
Michal Sládeček
; Univerzitet u Beogradu, Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju, Kraljice Natalije 45, RS–11000 Beograd
Abstract
Analysis starts from Rawls’s disposition that in a liberal society autonomous persons should have two moral powers – the capacity for a sense of justice and the capacity to establish, pursue and revise the concept of the good. Political or neutral liberalism advocates the justification of state intervention to improve the first type of capacity while declaring the interference with the second capacity illegitimate. The critique of this disposition is done by analysing the perspectives of Jonathan Quong and Martha Nussbaum, showing that they lead to allowing irrational and authoritarian perspectives in education, that is, neglecting the development of valuable capacities. Although institutional influence can be biased and paternalistic, in some cases it may be legitimate for the institution to create conditions that enhance people’s ability to evaluate, reevaluate, and revise their conceptions of the good.
Keywords
John Rawls; state intervention; capacity; liberalism; Martha Craven Nussbaum; perfectionism; Jonathan Quong; Joseph Raz
Hrčak ID:
272028
URI
Publication date:
7.1.2022.
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