Description
Reconstructing Rawls has one overarching goal: to reclaim Rawls for the Enlightenment--more specifically, the Prussian Enlightenment. Rawls's so-called political turn in the 1980s, motivated by a newfound interest in pluralism and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has led liberalism more broadly toward cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. Robert Taylor believes that it is time to redeem A Theory of Justice's implicit promise of a universalistic, comprehensive Kantian liberalism. Reconstructing Rawls on Kantian foundations leads to some unorthodox conclusions about justice as fairness, to be sure: for example, it yields a more civic-humanist reading of the priority of political liberty, a more Marxist reading of the priority of fair equality of opportunity, and a more ascetic or antimaterialist reading of the difference principle. It nonetheless leaves us with a theory that is still recognizably Rawlsian and reveals a previously untraveled road out of Theory--a road very different from the one Rawls himself ultimately followed.
Author: Robert S. Taylor
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Published: 11/15/2012
Pages: 360
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.17lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.81d
ISBN13: 9780271037721
ISBN10: 0271037725
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Political
- Philosophy | Ethics & Moral Philosophy
- Political Science | History & Theory | General
About the Author
Robert S. Taylor is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis.