[PEN-L:32571] RE: Re: John Rawls

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: RE: [PEN-L:32570] Re: John Rawls

Rawls' idea of justice came from the idea that one thinks about "if I were to set up a society and didn't know what position I would end up in, how would I design it?" The idea is that we should limit inequality because in this hypothetical situation, we might end up with the short end of the stick. Other values also follow from the hypothetical.

My point was that this seems pretty individualistic. It doesn't recognize that people care about the fates of others even without doing the "putting myself in the other guy's shoes" routine.

calling all experts on this subject! calling all experts!
------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: enilsson@xxxxxxxxx [mailto:enilsson@xxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 1:39 AM
> To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [PEN-L:32570] Re: John Rawls
>
>
> Jim D wrote,
>
> >. . . I can't claim to be an expert on Rawls. His theory of
> justice does
> >seem very individualistic, which goes against notions of the societal
> >construction of our personal characters, etc.
>
> Another nonexpert opinion: I think that the social construction of
> persons (in particular of personal ideas of justice) is
> consistent with
> Rawls' social contract approach. His idea is NOT necessarily that we
> return to a "state of nature" with no socially constructed
> characteristics when "we" design a new society.
>
> Rather, we construct it with "our" already socially
> constructed notions
> of justice, etc. (I'm not sure of this: I don't know exactly
> what Rawls
> says about where he thinks our notions of justice come from
> (from nature
> or from society)). But regardless of what he believed, it is
> possible to
> see that those who design the ideally just world get their ideas of
> justice, etc., from already existing societies.
>
> I think.
>
> Eric
>
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