Justice and the good from a eudaimonistic standpoint

Philosophy & Social Criticism

Volumn 18, Issue , 1992, Pages 333-354

  Ferrara, Alessandro ^a  

^a SAPIENZA UNIVERSITY OF ROME   (Italy)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84972716601     PISSN: 01914537     EISSN: 1461734x     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/019145379201800307     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. I have argued this point in “Postmodern Eudaimoiia,” in Praxis International, Vol. 11, n. 4, 1992, pp. 387-411.
2. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, p. 129.
3. Dworkin characterizes his own view of justice as continuous with a comprehensive and defensible view of the good. With the choice of this dichotomy, Dworkin presents a liberal, yet non-deontological conception of justice ‘a conception of justice as liberal equality. Cf. R. Dworkin, Foundations of Liberal Equality, The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. VII, Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press, 1990, p. 67.
4. Cf. J. Habermas, Erlaüterungen zur Diskursethik, 1991, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, pp. 103ff., J. Habermas, Faktizitat und Geltung. Beiträgezur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtstaats, 1992.
5. Cf. J. Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, 1984, Boston, Beacon Press, Vol. I, p. 20-21, Vol. II, ch. V, 3. Cf. also J. Habermas, Erlarterungen zur Diskursethik, p. 39.
6. Cf. J. Habermas, Erlarterungen zur Diskursethik, pp. 41-43.
7. Cf. J. Habermas, Faktizität und Geltung, p. 200.
8. Cf. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 447.
9. In this case it would be hard to make sense of what is discourse-theoretic about the Diskursethik. In fact, the crucial factor determining the rightness of a norm would not be the discursively generated “rational consensus,” but ultimately the factual absence of contradictions between two lists of propositions, i.e., the one which contains descriptions of the effects of a generalized observance of the norm and the one which contains descriptions of what each person wants. Discourse heuiistically could help us draft, edit or refine the two lists’ the lists of the projected effects of the norm and the list which records what each participant wants-but could add or subtract nothing to the absence or existence of contradictions between items on the two lists. It would be helpful in preparing the decision, irrelevant in determining it.
10. J. Habermas, MoralbewuRtsein und kommunikatives Handeln, 1983, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, p. 117.
11. Cf. J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 126-27.
12. In “The priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” Rawls illustrates five ideas of the good that satisfy this condition and on which the theory of justice can thus freely draw: a) the idea of “goodness as rationality,” b) the idea of “primary goods,” c) the idea of “permissible conceptions of the good,”d) the ideaof “political virtues,” e) the idea of the good for a political society as such.” Cf. J. Rawls, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1988, Vol. 17, n. 4, pp. 253-73.
13. Cf. J. Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1985, pp. 223-51; J. Rawls, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” in Philosophy and Public Affairs, J. Rawls, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” in Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 1987, Vol. 7, n. 1, pp. 1-25; R. Rorty, “The Priority of Democracy over Philosophy,” in R. Vaughan (ed.), The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom: Two Hundred Years After, 1988, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 262-68.
14. C. Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, 1987, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 52-53.
15. Cf. M. Walzer, Spheres of Justice, 1983, New York, Basic Books, ch. 13.
16. Cf. also, “Three Paths in Moral Philosophy,” in M. Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism, 1987, Cambridge, Harvard University Press.
17. Cf. R. Dworkin, Law's Empire, 1986, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, pp. 228-32.
18. A. Maclntyre, After Virtue, 1981, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 228-32.
19. R. Dworkin, Foundations of Liberal Equality, 1981, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, p. 8.
20. I have discussed this point more extensively in my Modernity and Authenticity, 1993, Albany, State University of New York Press, pp. 145-47.
21. This, however, seems hardly sufficient to qualify the model of challenge as an aesthetic view of the good life. The same point is made by Maclntyre in his discussion of the concept of a practice in relation to the notion of a skill (Cf. A. Maclntyre, After Virtue, pp. 180-81) and his account of the model of challenge, understood as ‘the model of the quest,” has no aesthetic connotation.
22. Dworkin develops his liberal conception of a “communal life” distinct from the sum total of the individual lives lived in this same society in “Liberal Community,” California Law Review, 1989, vol., 77, pp. 479-504. Unfortunately, the relevance of a “communal life” so conceived for a postmetaphysical approach to justice remains out of focus in Dworkin's account.