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Issues in Contemporary Liberalism¡JEconomic Justice and the Conception of the Good

Liberty as well as equality has been the objective of the trend of liberalism ever since it commenced. More common sense exists with respect to the issue of liberty which guarantess and carries out liberalism¡Fnevertheless¡Mopinions differ on fulfilling the idea of equality, particularly the economic issue. In present times,the consequence of the insistence of willfully diminishing liberalism on the market brings about some social problems, such as the widening gap between the rich and the poor. This makes a part of advocates of liberalism, for example, John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin redeem economic justice and allocation, persisting in the fact that nations should take regulatory measures or promote social welfare system to implement the idea of looking after the minor groups thereafter. However, the perspective maintained by them incurs the criticism from the core scholars of liberalism like Friedrich A.Hayek and Rober Nozick that opine the perspective will be a far cry from the core concept of classical liberalism, which regards a nation is interference with the economic allocation policy as an invasion of personal freedom. While John Rawls is theory of justice principle constitutes, causing the dispute within the internal lines of contemporary liberalism, the theory, to be blunt, gives rise to a new trend of thought as regards the balance for which liberalism searches to protect personal freedom and facilitate social economic justice.
In addition, liberalism cherishes individual freedom, emphasizes personal uniqueness as well as development, and pursues individual value and the conception of the good to embody respecting of personal thoughts. This genre of concept influences the stance a nation holds on the conception of the good, and thinks that personal value should be respected and not be meddled to embody neutral attitude of a nation. Rawls theory ¡]Theory of Justice¡^takes aim at justice to be the primary morality. Furthermore, priority is placed on ego or righteous independence that value or the conception of the good. He also hangs on to chase after the outlook of obligatory theory of the conception of the good under the frame constructed by justice. Yet, the theory of right priority, Atomism , neutral attitude towards a country, and value subjectivity that insisted by liberalism are all denounced by communitarianism who are of the opinion that the consequences of the Atomism in liberalism will lead to the loss of personal meaning, whereas the neutral attitude towards a country will contribute to problems, such as difficulties in building up social correctness to accomplish public interests. As to the criticism made by communitarianism, liberalism has the opportunity of reconsidering and scrutinizing its theory aside from making counter attacks, which generates a positive meaning for the development of theory of modern liberalism.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0801106-142358
Date01 August 2006
CreatorsChang, Wang-Liang
ContributorsGin-Chuan Hwang, Man-To Leung, K. S. Roy Tseng
PublisherNSYSU
Source SetsNSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive
LanguageCholon
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0801106-142358
Rightsunrestricted, Copyright information available at source archive

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