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2606 results in Choice Award Winners

Page 92 of 131

  • Part IV - National policies and international governance

  • François Lévêque
  • Book:
    The Economics and Uncertainties of Nuclear Power
    Published online:
    05 January 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 207-210

  • Summary

    National policies and international governance

    Politics is a possible route for taking decisions under uncertainty. Faced with the controversial findings of experts, it is up to public policy-makers to choose and act. It should consequently not come as a surprise to discover that politics plays a predominant role in decisions on nuclear power. Considerable uncertainty weighs on its competitive advantage, risks and regulation. Politics is also a way of providing and managing common goods. Only through mechanisms of public governance can safety and non-proliferation be secured. But, in contrast with this concept of strategically minded governments boldly advancing into the fog or labouring for the general interest, we are sometimes confronted with a more prosaic picture of public decision-making, a process not so much guided by scientific experts and legal advisors, as by the support of lobbies and vote-seeking. The pressure brought to bear on governments by ‘green’ parties or industrialists also explains many nuclear-policy decisions.

    Regardless of where it originates, the decisive weight of politics is illustrated by a trivial observation: countries have adopted and are still pursuing very different courses on the atom. Germany, which invested in nuclear power at an early stage, is now attempting a rapid exit; in neighbouring Austria not a single reactor has ever generated any electricity and the constitution bans nuclear power. France, on the other hand, is still banking on nuclear power, but wants gradually to reduce its share in the energy mix. Meanwhile, Switzerland and Belgium aim to gradually phase out nuclear power altogether. The former Soviet Union, the United States and the People’s Republic of China have developed civilian and military uses for the atom.

  • 165 - Primary goods, social

  • from P
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 643-647

  • Summary

    Rawls’s theory of justice concerns the scope of required equalities and permitted inequalities engendered by the basic social structure of a society: the distributive justice of “the way in which the major social institutions it together into one system, and how they assign fundamental rights and duties and shape the division of advantages that arises through social cooperation”(PL 258).Within this basic structure individuals act so as to secure an actual allocation of determinate goods to each participant. Arguments concerning this subject require an index of benefits and burdens that allows publicly accessible interpersonal comparisons of citizens’ well-being, in the relevant sense, among representative members of various social groups: “the idea is to find a practicable public basis of interpersonal comparisons in terms of objective features of citizens’ social circumstances open to view” (CP 454–455).

    Rawls’s answer is to focus on how the basic structure of society distributes social primary goods. These arise out of institutions – that is, legal powers and immunities:

    (a) First, the basic liberties as given by a list, for example: freedom of thought and liberty of conscience; freedom of association; and the freedom defined by the liberty and integrity of the person, as well as by the rule of law; and finally the political liberties; (b) Second, freedom of movement and choice of occupation against a background of diverse opportunities; (c) Third, powers and prerogatives of offices and positions of responsibility, particularly those in the main political and economic institutions; (d) Fourth, income and wealth; and (e) Finally, the social bases of self-respect.(CP 362–363)

  • 110 - Law, system of

  • from L
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 417-419

  • Summary

    “A legal system is a coercive order of public rules addressed to rational persons for the purpose of regulating their conduct and providing the framework for their social cooperation” (TJ 207).Of course, in any society there may be a number of systems of public rules regulating conduct and framing various cooperative undertakings. A legal system is distinct from these in several respects. A legal system is comprehensive in a way that other systems of public rules, typically subordinated to a legal system, are not. The legal system defines the basic institutional structure within which the activities governed by other systems of public rules take place (TJ 207). In the paradigm case a legal system has a territorially bounded core, namely a state, in a way that other systems of public rules need not. Of course, jurisdiction may extend in particular cases beyond this territorially bounded core, as when a state asserts its legal jurisdiction over some extraterritorial activity of its nationals. And there may be legal systems, e.g. international law, without a territorially bounded core in the form of a state (though in fact much and arguably the core of international law is bounded by the territories of the several states the voluntary undertakings of which give rise to it). Further, the authority of a legal system is typically final within the territorial boundaries of its jurisdiction. The authority of other systems of public rules is constrained by law. Finally, while many systems of public rules may be coercively enforced to some degree or other, they may be so only at the discretion of the legal system to which they are subordinate, and it will in turn typically claim or reserve exclusively for itself the most serious forms of coercion. Its claim to the exclusive use of these forms of coercion reflects the fact that among the interests it serves are some of the most fundamental of human interests, which is not necessarily true for other systems of public rules.

  • 192 - Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

  • from R
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 741-744

  • Summary

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) occupies a prominent place in the Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Rawls there often refers to his own thought and to the ways in which it was shaped by his engagement with Rousseau. Indeed, the influence of Rousseau on Rawls is extensive and yet for the most part unappreciated by historians of political thought. There are two important and related ways in which Rawls’s theory can be thought of as Rousseauian: (1) like Rousseau, Rawls believes that persons have a natural psychological need for recognition and for self-respect, that the denial of the former negates the possibility of the latter, and that these psychological needs are most effectively satisfied by egalitarian political institutions. And (2) like Rousseau, Rawls thinks that even the best-designed set of institutions must be supplemented by civic virtue; not the immersive patriotic virtue of the ancients, of course, but a modern, pluralism-compatible kind of virtue, the kind of virtue that conscientiously privileges the common good of the political community over the inevitable and ineradicable factional interests present within it.

  • 219 - The two principles of justice (in justice asfairness)

  • from T
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 845-850

  • Summary

    Rawls’s substantive conception of social justice, justice as fairness, includes two principles. They are an answer to this question: “viewing society as a fair system of cooperation between citizens regarded as free and equal, what principles of justice are most appropriate to specify basic rights and liberties, and to regulate social and economic inequalities in citizens’ prospects over a complete life?” (JF 41). The following are three key formulations of the two principles:

    FIRST PRINCIPLE

    Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

    SECOND PRINCIPLE

    Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. (TJ 266)

  • 129 - Maximin rule of choice

  • from M
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 493-495

  • Summary

    Maximin is a rule for making choices under conditions of uncertainty (or risk), that is, when one must select from a range of options, each one of which may result in various outcomes. Maximin says that one should identify the worst possible outcome for each option, and then select the option for which the worst outcome is least bad. It thus represents an extremely risk-averse or pessimistic standard of choice. Rawls recognizes that it is “clearly . . . not, in general, a suitable guide for choices under uncertainty” (TJ 133). However, he argues that because of the highly unusual features of the original position, it can be “useful as a heuristic device” (TJ 132) to think of the parties there selecting principles of justice on that basis.

    Although it is sometimes assumed that Rawls simply stipulates that the parties would accept maximin reasoning, this is not the case. As he pointed out in a 1974 article, such a stipulation “would indeed have been no argument at all” (CP 247).There are three main features of the original position that push the parties toward a very risk-averse choice, represented by maximin reasoning. First, the veil of ignorance prevents the parties from assigning probabilities to the various possible outcomes. They have no basis for estimating the likelihood that they will ind themselves in each of the various social positions when the veil is lifted. Indeed, because they are choosing fundamental principles of justice and not institutional arrangements directly, they do not have much of a basis for determining what the various social positions will be, let alone the likelihood that they will occupy any one in particular. Second, the parties are much more concerned with ensuring that certain basic interests are satisfied than they are with the prospects of additional gains above this level. Finally, the worst outcomes of some of their possible choices fall below this minimal level. That is, some of the conceptions that they might choose fail to ensure the protection of their basic interests.

  • 38 - Communitarianism

  • from C
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 119-125

  • Summary

    The term “communitarianism” refers to the writings of a number of political theorists who, in the 1980s and early 1990s, sought to critique what they saw as the excessively individualistic aspects of liberal theory in general, and of Rawls’s arguments in particular.

    Beyond this very general characterization, it is hard to identify a core set of substantive claims to which all of the theorists who have been described as communitarians subscribe. The claims of communitarians are addressed at diverse dimensions of the liberal project, from the putative metaphysical assumptions that lie at the basis of the liberal project, to the substantive policy prescriptions to which liberalism allegedly gives rise.

    While it is clearly not exhaustive, the following list of claims is at the heart of what came in the 1980s to be known as the “liberal/communitarian” debate.

  • (1) The metaphysics of the self. According to some communitarians, most notably Michael Sandel (Sandel 1982), liberals go wrong by placing a deicient conception of the moral and political agent at the core of their theories. Liberals, the argument goes, see the self as “unencumbered,” that is as related to its cultural and historical entanglements in a contingent rather than a constitutive manner. According to the view attributed to liberals by communitarians, the self is metaphysically “prior” to its ends, and to the conceptions of the good that are prevalent in its community.

  • 151 - Outlaw states

  • from O
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 586-587

  • Summary

    Outlaw states are one of four types of societies discussed in Rawls’s The Law of Peoples. The discussion occurs within the context of nonideal theory, where one concern of justice is how to bring noncomplying societies into compliance (LP 89–90). Outlaw states fail to comply with principle 4of the Law of Peoples, which states “a duty of non-intervention,” and with principle6, which requires societies “to honor human rights” (LP 37). Generally, Rawls distinguishes states from peoples by claiming that the former “as rational” are often “anxiously concerned with their power . . . and always guided by their basic interests” (LP 28). Outlaw states pursue their rational aims without limiting them by the reasonable constraints of the Law of Peoples. In contrast, “liberal peoples limit their basic interests as required by the reasonable” (LP 29).

    Due to their noncompliance, outlaw states are not to be tolerated and respected as members of international society (LP 81). Various constraints of the Law of Peoples, such as the duty to honor treaties (LP 37), do not apply with respect to outlaw states. Liberal and decent societies may subject them to political and economic and sanction for their failure to honor human rights and if these violations are sufficiently grave military intervention may be justified (LP 81). Moreover, if liberal peoples and decent societies “sincerely and reasonably believe that their safety and security are seriously endangered” they may fight just wars against outlaw states that fail to observe the duty of nonintervention (LP 90–91).War against outlaw states, then, is justified only if the human rights violations occurring are very grave or if the outlaw states pose a reasonable threat to the safety and security of liberal and decent peoples.

  • 39 - Comprehensive doctrine

  • from C
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 126-129

  • Summary

    A comprehensive doctrine is a set of beliefs afirmed by citizens concerning a range of values, including moral, metaphysical, and religious commitments, as well as beliefs about personal virtues, and political beliefs about the way society ought to be arranged. They form a conception of the good and inform judgments concerning “what is of value in life, the ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole” (PL 13). Rawls argues that in a society with a history of democratic institutions citizens will come to afirm different and incompatible comprehensive doctrines. This fact presents a problem for a theory of justice because it suggests that citizens will fail to agree on principles of justice to govern their institutions if they rely exclusively on their separate and incompatible comprehensive doctrines. Rawls addresses this problem by distinguishing between two points of view citizens can adopt – a comprehensive point of view and a political point of view. The comprehensive view is grounded in a comprehensive doctrine, while a political view is “freestanding,” meaning that while it draws from reasonable comprehensive doctrines it does not afirm or deny any particular one. Thus, political liberalism articulates and defends a set of freestanding political values, rather than arguing for the truth of comprehensive values grounded in a particular comprehensive doctrine. The separation of comprehensive doctrines from freestanding political values allows Rawls to locate the source of stability in society in a consensus on political values, while allowing for a plurality of comprehensive doctrines.

  • 62 - Duty of assistance

  • from D
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 226-228

  • Summary

    Rawls discusses the duty of assistance in the article “The Law of Peoples” and the book The Law of Peoples. The duty is merely mentioned subsequent to the list of seven principles in “Peoples” (CP 541). It is stated as the eighth principle in LP (LP 37).

    Rawls distinguishes between ideal and nonideal theory. The former concerns relations between liberal and decent peoples – collectively referred to as “well-ordered peoples” – and the latter concerns relations between such societies and those which are neither liberal nor decent. Nonideal theory is directed towards the long-term goal of an international society comprising liberal and decent peoples (LP 89). The duty of assistance, like principles ive (the right of self-defense) and seven (the duty to observe restrictions in war), applies only in nonideal conditions. This contrasts with Rawls’s account of domestic justice in which strict compliance is assumed in the original position (TJ 125) and the principles selected are applicable only in ideal conditions. Rawls claims that, “Well-ordered peoples have a duty to assist burdened societies” (LP 106), which are lacking in the “political and cultural traditions, the human capital and know-how, and, often, the material and technological resources needed to be well-ordered” (LP 106).

  • 89 - Hedonism

  • from H
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 336-338

  • Summary

    There are three broad types of hedonism in the philosophical literature. Psychological hedonism is a thesis about human motivation. It claims that humans are exclusively driven by the attainment of pleasure and the avoidance of pain (usually, their own). This is an empirical thesis: a claim about how humans are. The other two types of hedonism are normative: they are concerned with what is good or valuable. Axiological hedonism is a thesis about the nature of the good in general. It claims that pleasure is the only thing that is intrinsically good (i.e. good for its own sake, rather than as a means to other goods). As one of its most famous defenders, Jeremy Bentham, wrote in 1789: “Now, pleasure is in itself a good: nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil.” Prudential hedonism, by contrast, is a thesis about the nature of individual welfare. It claims that well-being consists in the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. The best life for an individual, as far as her own self-interest is concerned, is the one that has the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. It is possible to be a prudential hedonist without being an axiological hedonist, since one might claim that, while welfare is constituted by pleasure, things other than welfare – say, freedom, beauty or friendship – are intrinsically good.

  • 198 - Self-respect

  • from S
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 762-764

  • Summary

    Self-respect is an attitude grounded in the sense of one’s own worth or value. In TJ self-respect is the most important primary good and Rawls explains this importance on the basis of the conception of goodness as rationality. According to this, self-respect has two aspects: first, it consists in the conviction that one’s conception of the good or plan of life is worth carrying out; and second, it implies the confidence that one has the ability to pursue one’s plan of life successfully (TJ 386). When self-respect is lacking, persons do not ind the pursuit of their conceptions of the good fulfilling or satisfactory and may “sink into apathy and cynicism” (TJ 386).Given its importance, it is rational for persons to seek to secure self-respect, and consequently, it is also rational for the parties in the original position to avoid “at almost any cost” the social conditions that undermine it (TJ 386). Though Rawls identifies self-respect with self-esteem, in later writings he mentions that they are not the same, though the reasons for this are not entirely clear (CP 260).

    The conditions that support the first aspect of self-respect are, on the one hand, having a rational plan of life that satisfies the Aristotelian principle, and, on the other, the appreciation of fellow associates, in the absence of which it is impossible to maintain the conviction that one’s plan of life is worth carrying out. According to the Aristotelian principle, a person will be less confident about his own value when his plan of life does not allow for his abilities to be realized fully and to be “organized in ways of suitable complexity and refinement” (TJ 386–387). By the same token, others tend to value one’s activities “only if what we do elicits their admiration and gives them pleasure” (TJ 387). Associative ties provide the required setting in which one’s activities can be publicly affirmed by others and also offer support when one’s confidence is weakening (TJ 387).

  • 54 - Democratic peace

  • from D
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 195-197

  • Summary

    In the law of peoples, Rawls argues that a world of liberal and decent peoples would be peaceful and stable for the “right” reasons (LP 44–54). He draws on the democratic peace thesis. This thesis holds that war is less likely to occur between two democracies than between either a democracy and a nondemocratic society or two nondemocratic societies. Another version of the thesis holds that democracies are simply more peaceful than nondemocratic societies. Rawls invokes this latter interpretation in his argument, though other interpretations may support his position too. (See Hayes 2011 and Ray 1998 for reviews of the democratic peace literature.)

    The democratic peace thesis consists of a factual and a causal claim. The factual claim refers to the historical absence of war between democracies. Some trace this peace back to the early 1800s, while others hold that the post-World War II era is most signiicant, since few democracies existed before 1939.

    The causal claim holds that some feature of democratic society causes the peace. There are several competing, and perhaps complementary, versions of the causal claim. One holds that shared values lead to trust between democracies. Another holds that constitutional restraints inhibit war. The economic interdependence view holds that war is unattractive because it interferes with trade and other economic relations. Reelection constraint accounts depend on democratic voting and the political consequences of unpopular wars.

  • 100 - Justice and interpersonal comparison

  • from J
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 382-384

  • Summary

    Although any theory of distributive justice always requires some sort of interpersonal comparison, the possibility of interpersonal comparison remains one of the fundamental problems in theories of distributive justice, including Rawls’s difference principle. The problem of interpersonal comparison concerns the question of whether we can compare the state of one person with that of another (Hammond 1991).

    In economics, there is a deep and abiding skepticism about interpersonal comparisons. Many economists base their theories on individual preferences. But it is widely thought that there is no scientiic basis to compare a person’s mental states with another’s, and that interpersonal comparisons cannot be done without including some normative judgments. Skeptics argue that, for economics to be a branch of science, it must eliminate any normative elements and thus avoid interpersonal comparisons. Economists instead appeal to a Pareto principle (e.g. the weak Pareto principle holds that if every person in society strictly prefers a state of affairs x to y, x is socially preferred to y) to construct a collective decision-making rule. However, Pareto principles are silent about distributional justice.

    Rawls thinks that there is no need for interpersonal comparisons of overall well-being. His theory of justice only requires some basis for interpersonal comparison of what is relevant from the point of view of justice. This is why Rawls appeals to the notion of primary “social” goods. Rawls claims that the notion of primary social goods offers “the most feasible way to establish a publicly recognized objective measure, that is, a common measure that reasonable persons can accept” (TJ 81). According to Rawls, if primary social goods are used as the informational basis of distributive judgments, the problem of interpersonal comparison does not arise.

  • 145 - Nozick, Robert

  • from N
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 561-564

  • Summary

    In many ways Robert Nozick’s (1938–2002) objections to Rawls revisit a classical issue in liberal theory, namely the reconciliation of exclusive private property rights with redistribution in response to poverty. Before focusing on their disagreement about redistributive justice, it is useful to note a couple of important agreements between the two. Both Rawls (in A Theory of Justice) and Nozick (State, Anarchy, and Utopia) considered utilitarian theories to be the dominant political theories of their day, and both thought that, nevertheless, utilitarianism fails as a liberal theory of justice. Rawls expresses this point by saying that utilitarianism does not “take seriously the distinction between persons” (TJ 24), whereas Nozick expresses it by saying that utilitarianism fails to take the liberal principle of “self-ownership” seriously. The main problem, they agree, issues from utilitarianism’s focus on the aggregate sum of values as well as how these values are distributed in a society at any given time. This focus, Rawls and Nozick argue, makes utilitarianism incapable of protecting each person’s right to be free (not enslaved) or to be the one who has sole, exclusive coercive authority with regard to herself and her own powers and means. Both thinkers also explicitly view the contract tradition, especially Lockean and Kantian approaches, as more suited to developing contemporary liberal theories of justice (see TJ 10 n.4; Nozick 1974, 3–20). Nozick’s various objections to Rawls may be summarized as a charge that Rawls fails to stay true to their shared liberal aspirations. Nozick argues that although Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness is “undeniably[a] great advance over utilitarianism,” it still encounters the same types of problems (Nozick 1974, 230, cf. 172). Also Rawls’s theory, Nozick argues at length, fails to take seriously enough the distinction between persons or each person’s right to self-ownership.

  • Two - The curse of rising costs

  • François Lévêque
  • Book:
    The Economics and Uncertainties of Nuclear Power
    Published online:
    05 January 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 43-63

  • Summary

    It is well known that the cost of a technology drops as it is deployed and becomes more widely used. We have all noticed that we pay less for using a telephone, computer or airplane than our parents did, simply because the cost of these goods has been substantially reduced since the first products rolled off factory production lines. Economic theory cites two causes to explain this phenomenon: the scale effect and the learning effect. The first one is both familiar and intuitive. The bigger the factory, the less each unit costs to produce. In other words, the unit cost of large production runs is lower than for smaller volumes. At the start of a technology cycle the capacity of each production unit is relatively small, in particular because demand is still limited. Subsequently the size of factories gradually increases, stabilizing when diseconomies of scale start to appear (due, for instance, to time spent moving from one workshop to another). The learning effect in manufacturing is linked to the know-how which accumulates over time. The most intuitive example to illustrate this point is the repetition of a single task. You may spend more than ten minutes folding your first paper hen, but barely a minute after making a thousand or so. Manufacturing an airliner, steam turbine or solar panel is much the same. The learning effect is generally measured by the learning rate which corresponds to the reduction in cost when cumulative production doubles. The cost per kWh of wind power, for example, drops by about 10 per cent each time installed capacity doubles.

    Nuclear technology displays the opposite trend. The per-kW construction cost of the most recent reactors, in constant (inflation-adjusted) euros or dollars, is higher than that of the first reactors. A technology with rising costs is a very strange beast, which requires closer study, particularly as this feature distinguishes it from several competing technologies, such as wind or solar. If nuclear engineering firms fail to find a solution in the near future, the cost of nuclear power will continue to rise, undermining its competitiveness.

  • 224 - Well-ordered society

  • from W
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 874-877

  • Summary

    The notion of a well-ordered society has been a central idea in Rawls’s thinking about justice at least since his great opus, A Theory of Justice, in which it plays a crucial role. The core idea of a well-ordered society is a society whose citizens all accept the same conception of justice, its institutions actually conform to that conception, and both of these facts are publicly known. By envisioning different societies, each organized by a particular conception of justice, and so each “well-ordered” in terms of that conception, we can get some traction on the question of which of the many conflicting conceptions of justice is the most reasonable, is the most worthy of adoption. Over time the idea of a well-ordered society has come to play an increasingly important role. In Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Rawls presents the idea of a “well-ordered society” as one of two “companion fundamental ideas” to the “most fundamental idea in [his] conception of justice,” which is the “idea of society as a fair system of social cooperation” (JF 5). (The second companion idea is the “idea of citizens…as free and equal persons.”) Rawls offers a definition or explication of this term in each of his major writings, and in many papers as well. Though there are slight differences among these formulations, the core idea has remained fairly stable.

  • 108 - Kymlicka, Will

  • from K
  • Edited by Jon Mandle, State University of New York, Albany, David A. Reidy, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon
    Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014, pp 407-408

  • Summary

    Will Kymlicka (b. 1962) is a Canadian philosopher and author of influential writings on Rawls and his critics. Kymlicka’s main critique of Rawls is connected with the issue of multiculturalism. According to Kymlicka, Rawls assumes that the political community is homogeneous from a cultural point of view. In other words, Rawls does not address the fact that many of the states in which we live are multinational for historical reasons and/or polyethnic as a consequence of immigration. Kymlicka attempts to correct this neglect in Rawls through an argument that leads to a liberal-egalitarian defence of multicultural rights, which remains, by and large, Rawlsian. This argument is theoretically set out in Liberalism, Community and Culture (Kymlicka 1989) and it is fleshed out with empirical details in Multicultural Citizenship (Kymlicka 1995) and in subsequent books.

    Kymlicka’s starting point is Rawls’s conception of basic liberties. These liberties are not an end in themselves. They are instrumental to the various conceptions of the good that individuals may endorse. Where do these conceptions of the good come from? According to Kymlicka, they come from the “cultural community,” or “societal culture,” to which individuals are bound in their process of socialization. Therefore, societal cultures are the “context of choice” for the exercise of basic liberties. For Kymlicka, societal cultures may be internally plural and dynamic. Nevertheless, they are distinguished from each other and people create particular attachments to their societal culture (quite often through the sharing of the same language). Being fundamental for individuals as the context for the exercise of their basic liberties, Kymlicka concludes, the societal culture of each individual should be considered a “social primary good.”

Page 92 of 131