Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2008. / Title from screen (viewed on August 28, 2009). Department of Philosophy, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Peter H. Schwartz. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 61-66).

A tese examina a relação entre justiça e bem nos trabalhos tardios de John Rawls e, em especial, no livro O Liberalismo Político (1991). É argumentado que as mudanças nos trabalhos tardios de Rawls podem ser compreendidas como resultado de uma reorientação em seu pensamento. Rawls redesenhou alguns aspectos de sua filosofia para que ela cumpra um conjunto específico de papéis na cultura política pública das sociedades democráticas. Apesar das mudanças, os trabalhos tardios carregam consigo uma estrutura da relação entre justiça e bem que possui implicações importantes sobre o modo como os cidadãos, ao aceitar princípios políticos liberais, concebem suas doutrinas religiosas, filosóficas e morais a respeito do bem. A tese examina, portanto, como essas mudanças podem ser explicadas como resultado de uma reorientação que carrega consigo consequências relevantes para a relação entre justiça e bem. / This thesis examines the relationship between justice and good in the late works of John Rawls and, especially, in the book Political Liberalism (1991). It is argued that the changes in Rawls\' late work can be understood as as a result of a reorientation in his thinking. Rawls has redesigned some aspects of his philosophy so that it fulfills a specific set of roles in the public political culture of democratic societies. Despite the changes, late work carries with it a structure of the relationship between justice and well which has important implications for the way in which citizens, in accepting liberal political principles, conceive of their religious, philosophical and moral doctrines of good. The thesis examines, therefore, how these changes can be explained as a result of a reorientation that carries with it relevant consequences for the relationship between justice and good.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / For the past 2,000 years, the medical and philosophical communities have been unable to formulate a clear conception of function. Yet, I argue that this debate has become of central importance to Western bioethics due to the role the concept of function plays within emerging health care justice models, and more broadly, within the debate surrounding universal health care in the United States. My thesis focuses on the relationship between species function and health care justice. Specifically, my position is that any workable formulation of just health care that is justified from a Rawlsian or politically liberal perspective must utilize conceptions of normal species function that are as neutral and stable as possible. I conclude by showing that Larry Wright’s evolutionarily-based teleological account of function is the most neutral and stable account of function within the philosophical canon, and utilize two case studies – idiopathic short stature and obesity – to help illustrate the applicability of Wright’s account to liberal health care justice formulations.

The free exercise of religion as a basic human right is considered essential by those who are concerned about protecting and maintaining each person?s capability to live a good life. Unfortunately, in protecting this right the fundamental rights of women are often violated or overlooked. In order to grant religious freedom, liberal states often permit discriminatory and oppressive practices. Martha Nussbaum maintains that a balance must be struck between the protection of individual rights and the protection of religious freedom. She suggests the liberal state should not take a stand on disputed non-political issues concerning the good. The state should adopt political liberalism, thereby refraining from espousing religious or other ?comprehensive? views such as the view that men and women are innate moral equals. By doing so, Nussbaum says the political liberal state shows full respect for its citizens, and protects their ability to lead a good life. This thesis presents the argument that the liberal state need not, and should not, go as far as political liberalism in order to protect and show full respect for its citizens. Although the state should not pressure or force religious groups to change their doctrines to fall in line with liberal principles, the state may assert the truth of some non-political liberal values that are essential to maintaining the liberal political system. Political liberalism ties the hands of the liberal state, leaving it handicapped in its ability to protect individual rights, especially the rights of women and minorities. / Master of Arts

Human powers of moral reasoning and motivation are fragile. How should citizens committed to the achievement of liberal justice respond to this fact? This dissertation theorises a class of moral requirements that are central to the practice of liberal democracy but have been recently overlooked by political philosophers: the fortificational duties, which enjoin citizens to design and submit to civic practices that improve both their moral reasoning and the motivational resilience of their sense of justice. It considers the proposition that a conception of justice is unjustified if unlikely to generate its own freely willed maintenance, or stability, in the face of human nature, and it argues that this proposition is false. If justice may face overwhelming resistance unless steps are taken to fortify ourselves against our own fallibility, the right response is to pursue precisely such fortification. Chapter One sketches the orienting ideal of the dissertation: an ideal of a social world in which citizens live together as free and equal. Chapter Two assesses the proposition that we ought to modify or abandon this ideal if we determine that it is unlikely to be freely realised without serious civic or institutional assistance—a move suggested by John Rawls’s “stability test”—and it argues that the candidate arguments for this conclusion fail. The chapter instead argues that citizens are subject to moral requirements to fortify their sense of justice by designing and submitting to measures that increase the likelihood that they will accurately identify and freely comply with their fundamental moral duties. These measures together constitute a liberal democracy’s “stability charter.” Chapters Three to Six explore proposed elements of citizens’ stability charter. Chapter Three discusses the fortification of moral reasoning through democratic deliberation. Chapter Four considers what institutional mechanisms could keep democracy oriented toward the achievement of justice despite human fallibility, and it defends a minimalist conception of judicial review as a case study. Chapter Five argues that the practice of criminal punishment is justified by the duties of wrongdoers to pursue additional fortificational measures in the aftermath of their moral powers’ defective operation. And Chapter Six focuses on the special problem posed to the enduring achievement of justice by “unreasonable citizens” who reject fundamental liberal values. The distinctive contribution of the dissertation lies, firstly, in its novel appropriation of the Rawlsian ideal of stability—reconceiving stability not as a justificatory condition set by reason on our convictions, but as a practical challenge that our own convictions set for us—and, secondly, in its deployment of that insight to motivate novel arguments about the character of democratic deliberation, the limits and role of judicial review, the proper purposes of criminal punishment, and the ideal method of engagement with unreasonable citizens.

This thesis is a critique of the prominent strand of contemporary liberal political theory which maintains that liberal political authority must, in some sense, rest on the free consent of those subjected to it, and that such a consensus is achieved if a polity’s basic structure can be publicly justified to its citizenry, or to a relevant subset of it. Call that the liberal legitimacy view. I argue that the liberal legitimacy view cannot provide viable normative foundations for political authority, for the hypothetical consensus it envisages cannot be achieved and sustained without either arbitrarily excluding conspicuous sectors of the citizenry or commanding a consent that is less than free. That is because the liberal legitimacy view’s structure is one that requires a form of consent that carries free-standing normative force (i.e. normative force generated by voluntariness), yet the particular form of hypothetical consent through public justification envisaged by the view does not possess such force, because of its built-in bias in favour of liberalism. I also argue that the liberal legitimacy view is the most recent instantiation of one of two main strands of liberal theory, namely the nowadays dominant contract-based liberalism, which seeks to ground liberal political authority in a hypothetical agreement between the citizens. My case against the liberal legitimacy view, then, contributes to the revitalisation of the other main approach to the normative foundations of liberalism, namely the substantivist one, which legitimates liberal political authority through an appeal to the substantive values and virtues safeguarded and promoted by liberal polities.

Ce mémoire propose d’étudier la problématique de la gestion de la diversité religieuse au Québec à partir de la question du port du foulard islamique. Le premier objectif du mémoire est de caractériser le contexte socio-historique québécois, en voyant comment cette société se trouve en tension entre le modèle multiculturaliste canadien d’une part, et l’influence de la laïcité stricte à la française. En second lieu, cet ouvrage s’appuie sur les écrits tardifs de John Rawls pour développer un modèle libéral républicain de gestion du pluralisme. Le dernier chapitre vise quant à lui à appliquer ce modèle d’inspiration rawlsienne à la problématique du port du foulard, et ce, afin de montrer en quoi il peut constituer une formule mitoyenne pour le Québec en fournissant une solution autant aux écueils de l’approche libérale individualiste qu’à ceux de l’approche du républicanisme jacobin. / This thesis analyzes the problem of managing religious diversity in Quebec through the debates surrounding the Islamic veil. The thesis' first objective is to characterize Quebec's socio-historical context, mainly by underlining the tension between Canadian multiculturalism and French-style secularism. Afterwards, this work will rely on the late writings of John Rawls in the development of a liberal republican model in regards to managing diversity. The last chapter will involve the application of this model to the problem of the Islamic veil in Quebec, in order to present an hybrid solution that is as liberal as it is republican.

Despite its prominence as a pejorative term in moral and political philosophy, the phenomenon of ethnocentrism has escaped the focused attention of moral and political philosophers. Little sustained effort has been devoted to its in-depth analysis. This thesis attempts to fill in that gap in the philosophical literature, with a particular focus on the analysis of ethnocentrism as a problem, or rather a set of problems, facing the theory and practice of human rights. The thesis begins by drawing a core distinction between ethnocentrism as a moral phenomenon (i.e., a form of moral partiality), on the one hand, and as an epistemological phenomenon (i.e., a mode of judgment), on the other. After singling out the epistemological aspect of ethnocentrism as its main focus, the thesis argues for four interlocking claims. The first claim is that ethnocentrism represents an unwarranted mode of judgment, and thus an epistemic hazard that ought to be avoided if at all possible (Chapter One, §3). This claim is defended at length against the version of political constructivism advanced by John Rawls, which, by grounding political argument exclusively in ideas and values embedded in a common public culture, implicitly justifies a form of ethnocentrism (Chapter Two). The second claim is that moral argument cannot avoid ethnocentrism by grounding itself, as some have thought, in judgments upon which there is broad moral consensus, or rather by avoiding any appeal to judgments that are the subject of marked dissensus (Chapter Three and Chapter Four). Thirdly, the thesis argues that ethnocentrism is, if avoidable, only so to a limited extent (Chapter Six, §2). And fourthly, it offers an outline of how this limited form of avoidance might work (Chapter Five and Chapter Six, §3).

Um dos principais problemas apresentados pela concepção tradicional de democracia, caracterizada pela mera competição política entre interesses ou preferências, é sua insuficiência na avaliação dos resultados políticos. Em contraposição, a idéia de uma democracia deliberativa pretende, dentre outros objetivos, fornecer uma reflexão epistêmica, na medida em que se propõe a ir além do mérito dos procedimentos democráticos, com vistas a apresentar boas razões para as escolhas públicas. Ela requer uma justificação pública que se faça por meio da argumentação pública de todos os concernidos. Essa abordagem, contudo, é comprometida por falhas relacionadas a sua postura excessivamente idealista caso entendamos os procedimentos deliberativos como discussões políticas efetivas voltadas para o consenso ou à eventual vagueza de seus parâmetros epistêmicos. Procuro defender, em sentido contrário, que critérios adequados à justificação pública podem ser encontrados na concepção política de justiça presente no liberalismo político de John Rawls. Sua proposta deve ser interpretada, em discordância com críticas correntes, como defensora da democracia e plenamente compatível com a deliberação democrática. / One of the major problems that beset the traditional conception of democracy, marked by a mere political contention of interests or preferences, is the absence of a due appraisal of political outcomes. Contrarily, the idea of deliberative democracy intends inter alia to provide an epistemic account so far as it goes beyond procedural values in order to find good reasons for a public choice. It claims a public justification by way of a public reasoning among all those concerned. This account reveals, however, shortcomings for being either too idealist if its deliberative procedures mean a public discussion whose aim is consensus or too vague whether one considers those procedures as epistemic standards. I sustain otherwise that appropriate criteria for public justification can be found in a political conception of justice supported by John Rawls political liberalism. This account is to be shown in opposition to common objections - as encouraging democracy and not inimical to democratic deliberation.

Notre idée principale est d’essayer de comprendre la pensée politique de Raymond Aron à partir de sa théorie sur l’histoire. Pour nous, derrière sa proclamation d’une politique raisonnable ou progressive existe un support épistémologique, à savoir la proposition d’un déterminisme de probabilité concernant la vérité historique, proposition qui ne peut se constituer que dans le cadre d’une critique de la philosophie spéculative de l’histoire. Dans l’Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire, Aron tente de surmonter l’antinomie du devenir humain entre unité totale du modèle hégélien-marxiste et pluralité irréductible du modèle d’Oswald Spengler, mais sans tomber dans le piège du relativisme absolu. Plus précisément, sa propre critique de la philosophie de l’histoire se constitue à double niveau : au niveau méthodologique, il essaye de réinterpréter la relation entre la compréhension et l’explication pour établir l’objectivité historique. Et au niveau ontologique, pour éviter une conclusion relativiste, il réintroduit l’idée d’une société humanisée au sens kantien, mais d’une manière moins téléologique et plus régulatrice. Dans le domaine politique, corrélativement, il rejette tout type de messianisme garanti d’avance, car, à ses yeux, ce n’est que par choix et décision instantanée que l’homme fait son histoire, tout en gardant l’espoir de la liberté. Et son libéralisme se différencie du libéralisme purement économique et apparaît à la fois conservateur vis-à-vis de la tradition et essentiellement politique. Notre recherche consistera à montrer comment s’est élaboré, en surmontant les philosophies dogmatiques de l’histoire, ce déterminisme de probabilité ; comment il a su appliquer cette conviction historique à son analyse de la société, notamment en tant que libérale et quel rôle doit jouer, selon lui, un intellectuel face à la politique ; nous reprendrons ensuite sa critique vis-à-vis des intellectuels français, pour l’appliquer au débat entre les intellectuels chinois. / Our main intention is to present the philosophical background of Raymond Aron’s political point of view by way of his theory on historical philosophy. For us, behind his proclamation of a reasonable politics, exists an epistemological support, known as determinism of probability as far as the historical truth is concerned. And this determinism is only possible when it is based on a critique of the speculative philosophy of history. In the book named introduction to a philosophy of history, Aron tries to surpass the antinomy of historical becoming, between total unity of the hegelian-marxiste model and the irreducible plurality of the Oswald Spengler model, and meanwhile without falling into an absolute relativism. More precisely, the historical philosophy of Raymond Aron is dedicated to a two-dimensional constitution. On the epistemological level, he tries to reinterpret the relation between explication and comprehension, by way of circle between these two methods, and aim to, in the end, establish the limit of historical objectivity by introducing a certain determinism of probability; on the ontological level, in order to avoid the relativist conclusion, he keeps the Kantian notion of truth, but in a less teleological and more regulative sense. Correlatively, in the domain of politics, he declines all kind of Messianism who claims to possess in advance the historical truth, because for him, it is only via instant choice and decision based on the liberty that can man creates his history. His liberalism essentially political is different from the neoliberalism, and maintains a conservative attitude towards the tradition. Generally speaking, our research consists of presenting how this determinism of probability is possible, and how Aron applies this philosophical point of view to the political practice, and according to him, what should an intellectual do facing the politics. And we will also discuss his critiques to the idealism of the french intellectual, in order to analyze the debate among the chinese intellectual. / 本文旨在从雷蒙•阿隆的历史观入手来了解其政治观点形成的背景。我们认为，他在政治上主张的一种“合理的政治观”始终是基于他的历史哲学观，即“或然决定论”展开的，而后者，在其博士论文《历史哲学批判导论》一书中得到了很好的阐明。从破除历史理性的二律背反开始，即黑格尔-马克思传统的作为统一体的历史观和以斯宾格勒为代表的不可还原的多样性的历史观，阿隆构建起一种既超越实证主义，又不陷入相对主义（通过引入康德意义上的“真理”概念）的或然决定论。具体言之，他的历史哲学批判基于一种双层面的建构，一方面，在认识论层面，他试图重新阐释说明和理解的关系来维护历史的客观性；在形而上学层面，为了避免相对主义的结论，他引入了康德意义上的“人道主义社会”的概念，并将其视为一种更少目的性而更多调节性的概念。就政治领域而言，与此相对应的，他拒斥任何先定的救世福音说，并且坚信人类的历史只能由每个自由的个体的当下的选择和决定中被创造。他所主张的自由主义，不同于经济自由主义，一方面对传统秉持保守的态度，另一方面，本质上又是一种政治的自由主义。我们的研究将从阿隆对传统的教条的历史哲学的批判起步，揭示其“或然决定论”的观点的形成过程；及其历史观如何影响其政治观的过程，尤其反映于他作为一名知识分子，对历史的态度问题；我们也将讨论他对法国知识分子弊病的批判，并且将这一批判引入对中国知识分子的讨论当中。