On Apr 27, 1:54=A0am, Immortalist <reanimater_2...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> Rawls argues that the task of social and political institutions is the
> preservation and enhancement of individual liberty and well-being.
> Rawls tries to develop a procedure that would yield principles of
> justice. These principles of justice would then serve as guides in the
> constuction and evaluation of social and political institutions.
Well, but, if that was anything more than a slight rephrasing
of the preamble to the US Constiution. the people with a
mind towards true justice and liberty wouldn't have already
started making internet blogs, robots, and spandex,
>
> In Rawls's view, questions of justice arise when a society evaluates
> the institutions and practices under which it lives with an eye toward
> balancing the legitimate competing interests and conflicting claims
> which are pressed by the members of that society. If we adopt the
> language of rights, we can say that Rawls sees problems of justice
> arising when legitimate rights claims come into conflict. Rawls does
> not view the citizens of a state as naive moralists searching for a
> Utopian ideal. Rather, they are sufficiently self-interested to wish
> to pursue their own individual interests and achieve their own
> individual goals. Given inevitable competing interests and conflicts,
> Rawls's task is to attempt to provide a procedure that will enable the
> members of the society to adopt principles for resolving the conflicts
> and for adopting just practices and institutions. In other words his
> question is this: By what procedure can self-interested persons with
> legitimate competing claims adopt principles for just institutions and
> practices?
>
> Rawls's answer is to appeal to a contract process constrained by
> certain assumptions. Several of the more im****tant assumptions include
> the following: (1) that human cooperation is both possible and
> necessary; (2) that the contractees adhere to the principles of
> rational choice; (3) that all contractees desire certain primary goods
> that can be broadly characterized as rights and liberties,
> op****tunities and powers, income and wealth-in other words, general
> goods that are necessary to the attainment of any other individual
> goods persons may desire; (4) that the contract process be constrained
> by a minimal morality which stipulates that principles adopted by the
> contractees be general, universal in application, public, and the
> final court of appeal for ordering the conflicting claims of moral
> persons; (5) that the parties to the contract are capable of a sense
> of justice and will adhere to the principles adopted.
>
> The Individual & the Poliical Order
> An Introduction to Social & Political Philosophy
> -Norman E. Bowie & Robert L.
Simonhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/det=
ail/-/0847687805/
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