scholarly journals Sprawiedliwość polityczna a neutralność. Kilka uwag o rozumnej naturze liberalizmu politycznego Johna Rawlsa i Charlesa Larmore’a

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 188-219
Author(s):  
Rafał Prostak
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Political Values ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Moral Position ◽  
Political Decisions

Two fundamental features of a liberal political community are usually identified in contemporary deliberations: (1) there is an inevitable pluralism of visions of good and worthy life, blended into a wide range of religious, philosophical and ethical positions; (2) those who are in power are under an obligation to set public matters in such a way as to avoid discrimination of any class of the ruled. In respect of (1) and (2), it is presumed that the process of enacting, implementing and executing public law shall be separated from any perfectionist moral position, because being impartial when making political decisions is a prerequisite for non-discriminatory politics. This kind of politics looks for proper, convincing and comprehensible reasons to establish a new legal standard of behaviour in the ‘public reason’ – a set of moral statements and political values commonly shared in an open, pluralistic and tolerant society, which does not provide decisive answers to any questions about the meaning of life and does not bring us closer to discover its ideal. This article tries to reproduce the main notions and ideas of leading, contemporary liberal philosophers – John Rawls and Charles Larmore – that deal with the very nature of impartiality of a liberal state and the ability of policymakers to be impartial. It also presents the critical views of Stephen Macedo and Nicholas Wolterstorff, who question the possibility of building a neutral state.

Religion in the EU: Using Modified Public Reason to Define European Human Rights

2009 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1439-1468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian M. Awe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Value ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Dialectical Process ◽  
Comprehensive Doctrines ◽  
The Eu

At the current stage of its evolution, the European Union (“Union” or “EU”) has reached a juncture where many leaders and scholars believe that greater integration is both desirable and necessary. Presumably, a primary method by which greater solidarity and integration can be achieved within the EU is through the public inclusion of common value-laden concepts – as defined through a dialectical process – present within comprehensive doctrines such as religion. To date, however, an effective and inclusive means for utilizing religion in this manner has yet to be formulated. In response, this article takes two prominent paradigms – Jurgen Habermas' intersubjective discourse theory and John Rawls' liberalism – to approach the problem and draws from them a new solution that, while tied to their theoretical underpinnings, is nonetheless a novel approach to achieving greater integration within the Union. Under this new framework, the process of legislatively defining human rights allows the morality common to European comprehensive doctrines – including official and unofficial religions – to bolster the Union's solidarity, legitimacy, and democracy both procedurally and substantively.

What Scope for Ethics in the Public Sphere? Principled Autonomy and the Antinomy of Practical Reason

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-498
Author(s):  
Maureen Junker-Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Public Sphere

Concepts of ‘public reason’ vary according to the underlying understandings of theoretical and practical reason; they make a difference to what can be argued for in the public sphere as justified expectations to oneself and fellow-citizens. What is the significance for the scope of ethics when two neo-Kantian theorists of public reason, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, propose a reduced reading of the ‘antinomy’ highlighted in Kant’s analysis of practical reason? The desire for meaning, unrelinquishable for humans, is frustrated when moral initiatives are met with hostility. Kant resolves the antinomy between morality and happiness by invoking the concept of a creator God whose concern that our anticipatory moral actions should not fail encourages the hope on which human agency relies. Defining the scope of ethics by the unconditional character of reason ( Vernunft) rules out the minimisation of ethics to what can safely be expected to be delivered.

Tolerating Decent Societies

John Rawls ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 371-382
Author(s):  
Jon Mandle
Keyword(s):  
Public Reason ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Liberal Democratic Society ◽  
Political Decisions

Rawls argues that the public reason of a liberal democratic society should aim to include—and therefore tolerate—all reasonable persons. But the public reason that he defends for the Society of Peoples (globally) is considerably more inclusive. Rawls argues for the toleration of “decent” societies that are not liberal democracies. Critics have charged that such toleration, while perhaps pragmatic, is unprincipled. But a careful examination of Rawls’s criteria for “decency” reveals a defense of Rawls’s position that is grounded in the institutional requirements for a society to be able to make its own legitimate political decisions.

scholarly journals Justice and the Fetus: Rawls, Children, and Abortion

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID M. SHAW
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Controversial Issues ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Over Time

In a footnote to the first edition of Political Liberalism, John Rawls introduced an example of how public reason could deal with controversial issues. He intended this example to show that his system of political liberalism could deal with such problems by considering only political values, without the introduction of comprehensive moral doctrines. Unfortunately, Rawls chose “the troubled question of abortion” as the issue that would illustrate this. In the case of abortion, Rawls argued, “the equality of women as equal citizens” overrides both “the ordered reproduction of political society over time” and also “the due respect for human life.” It seems fair to say that this was not the best choice of example and also that Rawls did not argue for his example particularly well: a whole subset of the Rawlsian literature concerns this question alone.

Public Reason, Private Virtue, and Political Philosophy: Religious Approaches to the Progressive Income Tax

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-199
Author(s):  
Michael A. Livingston
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Religious Texts ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
Religious Perspectives ◽  
Partial Exclusion

The use of religious texts in public policy debates has been the cause of significant controversy. Believing Christians, Jews, and others naturally suggest that their faith should play a role in real-world policy discussions. But others suggest that such arguments may be dangerous and, in any event, lack persuasive power to those not part of the same religious tradition. The public reason theory, frequently associated with John Rawls, states that religious arguments are permissible only when supported by evidence that would be accessible to those who do not share the same underlying religious beliefs. While religious arguments are most commonly associated with abortion, homosexuality, and other social issues, they have also been applied to tax policy. Conservatives have cited the Biblical tithe as evidence in support of a flat, low-rate tax. Liberals have cited Biblical injunctions to practice social justice and protect the poor in favor of progressive, redistributive tax systems. These arguments vary in different religious traditions, but they share a sense that traditional religious texts remain relevan to the contemporary debate. The tax experience suggests the dangers of religious perspectives are frequently exaggerated. Religious arguments frequently contradict each other and only rarely do they make an appeal to direct, irrefutable divine guidance. A larger problem is that religious guidance is often inexact in nature, and religious people may have a tendency to become overly emotional in presenting them. A degree of modesty making such arguments, rather than a full or partial exclusion, appears the best solution.

The True, the Good and the Reasonable: The Theological and Ethical Roots of Public Reason in Islamic Law

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Fadel
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Liberal State ◽  
Overlapping Consensus ◽  
Normative Pluralism ◽  
Substantive Law

The events of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent declaration of an open-ended “war on terror” have given a new urgency to long-standing discussions of the relationship of Islam to liberalism. In order to avoid the polemics that characterize much of the writing in the “Islam/Liberalism” genre, this Article proposes to use the framework set forth in John Rawls’ Political Liberalism to examine the grounds on which Muslim citizens of a liberal state could participate in a Rawlsian overlapping consensus. An overlapping consensus according to Rawls arises among citizens in a politically liberal state when they - despite holding incompatible theories of the good - each endorse the constitutional essentials of a politically liberal state for reasons within their own comprehensive religious or philosophical doctrines. This Article argues that the basis on which orthodox Muslims can participate in such an overlapping consensus can be found in Islamic theology and ethics. Because theology and ethics comprise the fundamental commitments of orthodox Islam, the political commitments set forth in Islamic substantive law which are inconsistent with constitutional essentials must be interpreted in light of those commitments. After describing orthodox Islam’s theological and ethical commitments to rational theological and moral inquiry, the Article argues that such commitments implicitly require political institutions that allow free theological and ethical inquiry. The Article illustrates this aspect of Islam by describing the development of a system of intra-Muslim normative pluralism in which the existence of conflicting ethical judgments was accepted as a legitimate and inevitable product of moral reasoning. The existence of normative pluralism in the realm of ethics, in turn, made the project of a legal system derived entirely from revelation an epistemological impossibility. The result was that Islamic substantive law was forced to adopt non-theological modes of justification. The Article argues that, in the course of so doing, Muslim jurists made appeals to what Rawls would deem to be public reason. The Article concludes with a series of examples from Islamic substantive law that illustrate the ways in which the pre-modern Islamic legal system represents a qualified form of public reason, consistent with the public culture of a liberal democracy.

Criminal Law in the Age of the Administrative State

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Chiao
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
Public Institution ◽  
Administrative State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Morality ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Procedural Rights

What is the criminal law for? At its most elemental, criminal law secures the possibility of a shared life under stable and just public institutions. In the age of the administrative state, criminal law performs this task by stabilizing cooperation across a wide range of contexts, from backstopping compliance with tax law to protecting the integrity of a nation’s fisheries. How should we decide when this is a legitimate use of the criminal law? The “public law” conception sketched in this book suggests that because the criminal law is a public institution, it should be evaluated by the very same values that we structure our evaluation of public institutions generally. In contrast to familiar forms of retributivism, the public law conception starts from the political morality of public institutions, rather than the interpersonal morality of private relationships. In a society with democratic and egalitarian aspirations, the legitimacy of the criminal law depends in part upon the democratic and egalitarian character of the institutions it supports, and in part upon its supporting those institutions by means that are themselves consistent with democratic and egalitarian principles. The particular account of those principles sketched in this book is democratic, egalitarian without being equalizing, and focused on a form of freedom—effective access to central capability—as its currency of evaluation. This approach provides a distinctive and illuminating framework for assessing a wide range of problems in criminal law and policy, from mass incarceration, to over-criminalization and the allocation of procedural rights.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
J. Benjamin Hurlbut
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Embryo Research ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Human Embryo Research

The introduction introduces the topic and central argument of the book: that at the heart of the human embryo research debates was the question of how the public should reason together about a domain of science and technology that touches upon the most fundamental dimensions of human life. It introduces the methodological approach and coproductionist theoretical framework of the study. It introduces the idea of the “constitutional position of science” in American democracy, and illustrates the unacknowledged but constitutional position of scientific authority in John Rawls' idea of public reason.

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