The Habermas-Rawls Dispute Redivivus

Rawls on Race/Race in Rawls

John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) is widely credited with having revived post–World War II Anglo American political philosophy. This book together with his later writings are routinely judged to constitute the most important body of work in that field. Indeed, with the collapse of Second World and Third World socialist ideologico-political alternatives, liberalism in one form or another h...

Revisiting Rawls

The present paper revisits the issue of rational decision making in John Rawls’ original position. Drawing on Isaac Levi’s theory of decision, I discuss how we can defend Rawls against John C. Harsanyi’s charge that maximin reasoning in the original position is irrational. The discussion suggests that systematic application of Levi’s theory is likely to have important consequences for ethics an...

The Habermas-gadamer Debate

ly negated on the basis of a.false c.laim t.. o superiority. ~~ciallife-; the-symmetrkaJ..rc1atioll-betweenpartners in a game is a more apnnooer1 than that ofdoctor~patient.Everyone IS on relatively equal terms in the gallle..in that there are no privileged knowers. There is, however~anlmder­ lying consensus which expresses the ontological primacy of tradition and which is the condition of all ...

Rawls, Constructivism, and the Tragic

In 1980, the liberal political philosopher John Rawls delivered a remarkable series of lectures at Columbia University. The Dewey Lectures, subsequently published in the Journal of Philosophy as “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” detailed a metaethical procedure–or method for formulating principles–that informed his earlier A Theory of Justice (1971) and that would make possible its sequ...

Rawls and Kantian Constructivism