Ariadne's Thread on Justice
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John

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speaker
John



The Original Position

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Vera Speaking

In general, I respect Rawls for trying to find a way to block out some of our biases when formulating principles of justice. But in very general terms, I see Rawls as part of a number of traditions that I think are dead ends. This is partly a criticism of his whole project, but we can also think of it as a criticism of the Original Position.

First of all, he wants to formulate general principles. That's what the Original Position is all about. The assumption is that we need general rules, like scientific laws, that cover specific situations. The model here is natural science. And when he gets to the process of reflective equilibrium, he continues with the same model. We are to look at the data (in this case our considered moral intuitions) and try to formulate generalizations that subsume as much of the data as possible. Now, to me it seems obvious that the search for universal moral principles has been a failure. We don’t have to go around the world to prove that. We just have to pay attention to the different views found here in our own society.

Margaret Walker has written an interesting paper called "Feminism, Ethics, and the Question of Theory." She refers to what she calls the "theoretical-juridicial model" which seeks, like science, to formulate general principles in a very systematic way. She agrees that this model fits some moral situations very well, but she also believes that there are situations that it doesn't fit well at all. Some situations require "personal relationship or responsive care taking, situations that require sensitivity, flexibility, discretion, and improvisation." Walker thinks that there are other forms that morality can take -- other models. She talks about what she calls the expressive-collaborative" model as an alternative to the theoretical-juridicial model. So the question is, what would justice be like if we thought in terms of the expressive-collaborative model?

Second, he exhibits the typical male preoccupation with the problem of rights and obligations. What about care? Love? Trust? And other elements of morality? Modern male philosophers have tended to ignore those elements and focus on rights and obligations, rights and obligations, over and over. They're all baseball fans looking for the rule book.


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