rawls/habermas

["seneca savoie" <wintermute@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Been away for a little while. I came back and checked all your responses, so a
few comments. First and foremost, I've got to say that this is possibly the best




informed out of
the twelve or so philosophy lists that i currently subscribe to. If it wouldn't

be that troubling, It would be appreciated if when citing articles any important




points be summarized for those(such as myself) who don't have the opportunity to




have them at hand. Among the posts on this subject, I have seen the following
points stressed, and i shall attempt to answer each in turn.



1. Rawls assertion that an assurance of legitimacy is not assurance of justice
2. The conflict over which interests should be counted as relevant?
3. Rawls  Has heteronomy as link of relevant interest
4. Rawls moves in opposite of discourse theory, toward contract similar towards

hobbseian
 5. PL can Only can hold for negative freedom
6. The Monological interp of dialogical situuation
7. That people disagree about the good life but not justice is not true
8. Does not need total separation from good for democratic justifacation

constranined for time, i shall attempt to address the first two first.

1. Rawls assertion that an assurance of legitimacy is not assurance of justice

   Basically in order to trace this arguement, we have to remember that rawls
always moves in stages of justifacation. We adduce the principles of justice
behind the veil of ignorance(no this isn't the first stage, but it's as far back




as I'll go now because i have a bigger discussion of the reasonable later), to
the constitutional convention, to specific laws, etc. what he's saying is that
starting with your conception of justice(unless you're a legal positivist, then

which one is really irrelevant) you try and adduce processes that will be as in

line with justice as possible. But no procedure that we can manage will be
pefectly just, although it may be legitmate as a source of rules. So following
the rules and the rules as best we conceive them, eventually the legitimate rule




procedure can produce unjust outcomes. To draw 2 paralells


     In his criticism of libertarianism in PL(lecture8 p.271) rawls states that

the process of free trade, while itself legitimate, tends to produce injustice
if background conditions are not met. So while our reasons for adopting a rule
of free exchange may be just, we nonetheless cannot elevate this derivative rule




to the status of essential.

   A second, more specific comparison is with disourse ethics itself. While the

ideal discuorsive situation provides us with a basis of justifacation, we cannot




base every single action of the government on an actual open-to-all unanimous
discussion. This does not mean, however, that we cannot take the presuppositions




of such a sitiuation as our fundamentals and model a program of legitamacy after




that. Now after the decision-process has been modeled it may, upon the lack of
certain background conditions, produce certain outcomes unacceptable to those
presuppositions themselves, such as denying basic rights(as defined by the
discoursive conception itself). Hence why a certain maitnence of the original
priciples is at times justified, both in the case of say establishing a
constitition that can serve as the basis of reform when such "political drift"
has occured, and in the case of those who oppose fully legitimate laws through
civil disobedience(more on this later )




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