Michel Foucault???s and John Rawls??? respective contributions to political philosophy appear to have little in common. Foucault gives an insistently descriptive account of the reality of the political domain; Rawls focusses on normative questions of how it ideally might be. To the extent that the two thinkers are juxtaposed, such juxtaposition is generally used to highlight their differences. Foucault???s arguments are characteristically taken to show Rawls??? preoccupation with consensus and legitimacy to be politically problematic. This thesis pursues the suspicion that there is more positive ground for comparison between Rawls and Foucault than this prima facie assessment would allow. I claim that there are substantive and deep-seated congruences between Rawlsian and Foucaultian conceptual apparatuses. However, to vindicate this claim I take an indirect route. I start within the debates around Rawls??? later work. In this way I motivate a certain reading of this work which is justified in its own right, rather than being justified by the desire to force Rawls into Foucaultian categories. Having established this reading of Rawls with reference to immanent Rawlsian criteria, I develop the striking parallels which obtain between Rawls??? and Foucault???s historical conceptions of political normativity. In light of this commonality, it becomes possible to understand their respective practice as intellectuals in terms of a shared strategy to privilege democracy over truth.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/258903 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Field, Sandra Leonie, Philosophy, UNSW |
| Publisher | Awarded by:University of New South Wales. Philosophy |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Sandra Leonie Field, http://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/copyright |
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