tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post2539301845100014288..comments2024-03-28T06:07:03.667-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: A REPLY TO LFCRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-7262214520517755322016-08-27T19:40:50.193-04:002016-08-27T19:40:50.193-04:00Thank you for the reply.
The passage from A Theo...Thank you for the reply. <br /><br />The passage from <i>A Theory of Justice</i> that I quoted in my comment was not one I'd particularly noticed before, but in writing my comment last night, and looking briefly at parts of the book in connection with that, it jumped out at me as noteworthy -- and even perhaps a little surprising or un-Rawls-like in its tone, that sort of informal, rather personal address to the reader. <br /><br />I don't know -- though I'm sure some people reading this blog (including maybe J.W.F., above) do know -- where the scholarly consensus has settled on how Rawls conceived of what he was doing in terms of the bargaining/rational-choice aspect vs. the other aspects. Or even if there is a consensus on that.<br /><br />p.s. I recently read two-thirds or so of Daniel Rodgers's <i>Age of Fracture</i> (2011), which is an intellectual history of the years c.1970 to c.2000 in the U.S. At the beginning of one of the chapters, Rodgers discusses <i>A Theory of Justice</i> for a few pages and emphasizes pretty heavily the game-theory/rat.-choice angle, but that's doubtless partly because Rodgers' basic argument, as his title suggests, is that political and social thought in the period, at least in the U.S., turned toward a more 'disaggregative', methodological-individualist style than it had had at mid-century. That overall thesis is probably right or at least very defensible, but I didn't think his treatment of Rawls was especially balanced. Granted, the Rodgers book is intellectual history (not philosophy), and almost no writer he discusses gets more than two or three pages, and with that kind of compression no one is going to be happy with every summary.LFCnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-11693957104409302762016-08-27T12:40:05.183-04:002016-08-27T12:40:05.183-04:00Couldn't you say that Plato's Republic is ...Couldn't you say that Plato's Republic is one educated Greek's sense of justice?<br />Does that make it any less worth reading?<br /><br />If that is the case, why does the fact that Rawl's Theory of Justice is one educated person's sense of justice make it any less worth reading? <br /><br />Now there may be other factors which make Plato more worth reading than Rawls. Plato is a genius, Rawls is not, for example and a genius's sense of justice may well be more interesting than that of a simple educated person.s. wallersteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17448905469871566228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-78751658036780536802016-08-27T12:09:48.679-04:002016-08-27T12:09:48.679-04:00But one could just as easily say that the powerful...But one could just as easily say that the powerful idea driving Rawls' work was not, in fact, an attempt to solve a problem in bargaining theory, but rather to articulate a method to justify principles. That is the central aim of his first article, "Outline for Decision Procedure in Ethics," published in 1951, which gives a concise restatement of ideas he developed in his doctoral dissertation. This method shows up in <i>A Theory of Justice</i> in terms of reflective equilibrium and the construction of the original position. It is this problem about method that animates <i>Political Liberalism</i>. And although Rawls' early acclaim may be the result of the 1958 "Justice as Fairness" article, his reputation is built on <i>A Theory of Justice</i> and <i>Political Liberalism</i>.J. W. F.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07248247420303472121noreply@blogger.com