Deontological tradition
Contractualism of John RawlsDiscourse ethics
Part one
John Rawls and
(Contractual) Theory of Justice
Rawls and social contract
Original postition:A fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our
reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. In taking up this point of view, we are to imagine ourselves in the position of free and equal persons who jointly agree upon and commit themselves to principles of social and political justice.
“The veil of ignorance”: To insure impartiality of judgment, the parties are deprived of all
knowledge of their personal characteristics and social and historical circumstances.
The veil of ignorance• Parties do not know:
– The race, ethnicity, gender, age, income, wealth, natural endowments, comprehensive doctrine, etc. of any of the citizens in society, or to which generation in the history of the society these citizens belong.
– The political system of the society, its class structure, economic system, or level of economic development.
• Parties do know: – That citizens in the society have different comprehensive doctrines and
plans of life; that all citizens have interests in more primary goods.– That the society is under conditions of moderate scarcity: there is enough
to go around, but not enough for everyone to get what they want;– General facts about human social life; facts of common sense; general
conclusions of science (including economics and psychology) that are uncontroversial.
Principles of justice according to Rawls
• Each citizen is guaranteed a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties, which is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all others;
• Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions:– to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the
difference principle);– attached to positions and offices open to all.
Rawls’ underpinnings
Procedural version of Kantian moral philosophy?
Characteristics of citizen (human being)
Part two
Ethics of discourse
Discourse ethics
How to achieve a rationally justified agreement (consensus) with 'a power of argument, not an argument of power'
In public sphere: how the factual coercion may be normatively justified
Kantian origins
Kant's question about the notion of duty free from empirical inclinations, which is binding owing to the force of a pure reason
Discourse ethics: conditions of possibility for agree upon such duties are embedded within rules of linguistic communication.
Kant's categorical imperative is transformed into rules of rational discourse
Main representatives
Jürgen Habermas
Karl-Otto Apel
Robert Alexy
Apel and ideal communicative community
Moral foundations of each and every argumentative act:recognition of communicative community to which I belong.
Doing this, I recognize a moral duty based upon normative relationships between myself and others.
Habermas and communicative action
Each communicative action by its very nature poses some normative claims: to truthfulness, to sincerity, to fairness, to understandability
This nature of communicative action forms ground for communicative rationality, as distinct from instrumental rationality
Habermas and two principles
Principle of universalisation:All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation
Principle of discourse ethics:Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.
Alexy and rules of rational discourse
Preconditions for the possibility of argumentation:
1. No speaker may contradict herself.2. Every speaker may only assert what she actually
believes (as true/right).3. Every speaker has to use words (predicates)
with consistence (to similar objects)4. Different speaker may not use the same
expression with different meaning
Alexy and rules of rational discourse
The principle of rationality:
Every speaker must give reasons for what he or she asserts when asked to do so, unless he or she can cite reasons which justify a refusal to provide a justification.
Consequences:- Everyone who can speak may take part in discourse- Everyone may freely make his or her contribution to the discourse- No speaker may be prevented from exercising the rights laid down in the two preceding by any kind of coercion internal or external to the discourse.
Principles of burden of proof
Application 1.
Public vs. private reason(Public standards vs. private beliefs)
Citizens engaged in certain political activities have a duty of civility to be able to justify their decisions on fundamental political issues by reference only to public values and public standards.
[Rawls, after: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Application 2
Distributive justice: do we deserve what we possess?
Practical application
Habermas:Rules of discourse ethics as rules of democracyDeliberative democracy
Apel:Discourse ethics as ethics of responsibility for the factual communicative community I belong to.
Alexy:Legal argumentation as a rational discourse
Critiques
1. The notion of ideal community informs us little about real ones
2. Communicative community as a community of reach, well-educated western people- veiling factual inequalities in power- 'coercion of consensus'
3. Participants of communicative community find no real motivation to search for consensus
