Para quienes tengan interés en la filosofía moral y política contemporánea la obra de John Rawls es sin discusión una parada necesaria. De hecho, la tesis de Robert Nozick según la cual resulta imposible hacer filosofía moral y política sin considerar el marco ofrecido por Rawls, aunque parezca extrema, resulta bastante acertada. En gran medida el impacto de la obra de Rawls radica en su interés por ofrecer una teoría sustantiva de la justicia, teoría que hundiendo sus raíces en la (...) tradición de la filosofía sea capaz de orientarnos al momento de abordar las discusiones contemporáneas sobre justicia social. -/- En los trabajos que componen este libro el lector podrá encontrar una discusión actualizada sobre aquellos elementos que definen la base moral y política que Rawls presentó como fundamento de su teoría de la justicia. Al mismo tiempo, estos ensayos intentan construir un puente entre la justicia como equidad y otras tradiciones de la filosofía moral y política contemporánea. Para lograr este último fin, varios de los trabajos que aquí se presentan consideran las ideas de reconocimiento y autorrespeto como claves de interpretación de la obra de Rawls. (shrink)

This article discusses the self-respect argument for basic liberties, which is that self-respect is an important good, best supported by basic liberties, and that this yields a reason for the traditional liberty principle. I concentrate on versions of it that contend that self-respect is best supported by basic liberties for reasons related to the recognition that such liberties convey. I first discuss the two standard approaches loosely associated with John Rawls and Axel Honneth. Here self-respect pertains to traits and conduct (...) (Rawls) or to one’s personhood (Honneth). It is argued that these approaches fail to show why self-respect is better supported by the liberty principle than certain alternatives worth taking seriously – unless (in the case of personhood self-respect) self-respect is construed in such a narrow way that it is not a condition for autonomy or welfare in any plausible sense. I then identify a self-attitude that I call “a sense of competence”, which at least shows that the liberty principle is more important to autonomy than what we might otherwise have reasons to believe. (shrink)

Many theories of social justice maintain that concern for the social bases of self-respect grounds demanding requirements of political and economic equality, as self-respect is supposed to be dependent on continuous just recognition by others. This paper argues that such views miss an important feature of self-respect, which accounts for much of its value: self-respect is a capacity for self-orientation that is robust under adversity. This does not mean that there are no social bases of self-respect that such theories ought (...) to incorporate. It means that they are different: they consist of the motivational and epistemic resources needed to develop and maintain such robustness. (shrink)

Economic disparities often translate into disparities in political influence, rendering political liberties less worthy to poor citizens than to wealthier ones. Concerned with this, Rawls advocated that a guarantee of the fair value of political liberties be included in the first principle of justice as fairness, with significant regulatory and distributive implications. He nonetheless supplied little examination of the content and grounding of such guarantee, which we here offer. After examining three uncompelling arguments in its favor, we complete a more (...) promising yet less explored argument that builds on the value of self-respect. We first inspect the conditions and duties that securing self-respect entails. We then look into how uneven allocations of the value of political liberties bear, expressively and due to the power imbalances they yield, on such conditions and duties. (shrink)

A central feature of John Tomasi’s ‘Free Market Fairness’ is the emphasis it places upon the good of self-respect. Like Rawls, Tomasi believes that accounts of justice ought to offer support for the self-respect of citizens. Indeed, this is a key way in which Tomasi aspires to engage with the ‘high-liberal’ tradition. Unlike Rawls however, Tomasi argues that this support is best provided by our treating a broader set of economic liberties as basic liberties. In this paper I raise two (...) concerns about this latter claim. Firstly, I trace a number of significant ways in which Tomasi’s discussion of self-respect differs from that of Rawls. Whilst such divergences are not necessarily problematic, I argue that they serve to limit the purchase his account has on left-liberals. Further, I argue that the ideal of self-respect is more deeply ‘hard-wired’ into Rawls’s account of justice than Tomasi recognises. As such, Tomasi fails to address the full range of additional ways in which Rawls expects his principles of justice to support citizens’ self-respect. I argue that this also limits the force of Tomasi’s claims. Secondly, and more seriously, I argue that there are significant tensions between Tomasi’s discussion of self-respect and his most forceful argument in favour of the market democratic model he proposes. I argue firstly that Tomasi’s account of when citizens’ self-respect is jeopardised does not allow us to readily distinguish between economic security born of systems of welfare and redistribution, and economic security born of market forces and historical contingency. And more troubling still, is Tomasi’s belief that self-respecting citizens must view themselves as a ‘central cause’ of their situation. Such self-conceptions, I argue, can only coexist alongside the greater wealth thesis if citizens engage in quite naked self-delusions about their causal power. I argue that theorists of justice have good reason to be suspicious of promulgating such delusions and, as such, that this poses a serious problem for a justification of market democracy which aspires to rest upon an appeal to self-respect. (shrink)

Rawls argues that ‘Parties in the original position would wish to avoid at almost any cost the social conditions that undermine self-respect’. But what are these social conditions that we should so urgently avoid? One evident candidate might be conditions of material inequality. Yet Rawls seems confident that his account of justice can endorse such inequalities without jeopardising citizens’ self-respect. In this article I argue that this confidence is misplaced. Unequalising incentives, I claim, jeopardise the self-respect of those least advantaged—at (...) least under a Rawlsian schema—by undermining the very processes by which Rawls hopes to make distributional inequalities and self-respect compatible. I begin by setting out Rawls’s distinct account of self-respect before moving to describe how Rawls expects the difference principle to support citizens’ in this regard. I then draw upon GA Cohen’s distinction between ‘strict’ and ‘lax’ interpretations of the difference principle to argue that the presence of unequalising incentives undermines both the direct and indirect support that the difference principle can offer to citizens’ self-respect. As such, I claim that Rawls must either weaken his endorsement of unequalising incentives, or risk violating his ‘prior commitment’ to avoiding social conditions harmful to citizens’ self-respect. (shrink)

Anti-commodification theorists condemn liberal political philosophers for not being able to justify restricting a market transaction on the basis of what is sold, but only on the basis of how it is sold. The anti-commodification theorist is correct that if this were all the liberal had to say in the face of noxious markets, it would be inadequate: even if everyone has equal bargaining power and no one is misled, there are some goods that should not go to the highest (...) bidder. In this paper, I respond to the anti-commodification critique of liberalism by arguing that the political liberal has the wherewithal to account not only for the conditions under which goods should not be sold, but also for what kinds of goods should not be for sale in a market economy. The political liberal can appeal to a principle of equal basic rights, and to one of sufficiency in basic needs and the social bases of self-respect, I argue, to account for what’s problematic about markets in civic goods, necessary goods, and physical goods including body parts and intimate services. (shrink)

Self‐esteem is traditionally regarded as an important human good. But it has suffered a number of injuries to its good name. Critics allege that endeavours to promote self‐esteem merely foster narcissism or entitlement, and urge that we redirect our efforts elsewhere. I argue that such criticisms are symptomatic of a normative decline in how we think and theorize about self‐esteem rather than a defect in the construct itself. After exposing the shortcomings of alternative proposals, I develop an account of self‐esteem (...) that reflects what its supporters have in mind: a valuable form of self‐appraisal worth fostering in others and ourselves. (shrink)

Recent judicial rulings and changes in federal and state legislation have given for-profit corporations a growing list of rights and constitutional protections, including the right to practice religion free from many types of federal or state restriction. In this paper, we highlight the implications of these developments using Rawls’ Theory of Justice to explore the consequences of for-profit corporate religious freedom for consumers and employees. We identify preliminary principles to spark a discussion as to how expanding religious freedom for businesses (...) and fair access to goods and services can coexist in the for-profit marketplace. (shrink)

En este artículo defiendo que la concepción rawlsiana de la justicia distributiva va más allá de los márgenes de la justicia asignativa y que esta presenta buenos argumentos para hacer frente a las demandas de reconocimiento. Para alcanzar este objetivo, en primer lugar muestro que algunos críticos del paradigma liberal distributivo malinterpretan la concepción de la justicia distributiva elaborada por Rawls y reducen su finalidad a un mero reparto de bienes. Al hacer lo anterior, ellos no logran comprender la dimensión (...) moral de la propuesta rawlsiana, propuesta firmemente asentada en la idea de reconocimiento. En segundo lugar, analizo la relevancia que tienen las nociones de reconocimiento recíproco y autorrespeto en la teoría de la justicia de Rawls, para finalmente mostrar cómo a partir de ellas se puede reinterpretar la finalidad de la justicia distributiva e incluir las demandas de reconocimiento. (shrink)

This paper discusses Rawls’s thesis that the social basis of self-respect is one of the primarysocial goods. While the central element of the social basis consists in the attitudes of others(e.g. respect or esteem) the social basis may include also possession of various goods. Further,one may distinguish, following Honneth, universalistic basic respect from differential esteem andfrom loving care. This paper focuses on esteem, and further distinguishes three importantvarieties thereof (anti-stigmatization; contributions to societal goods, projects of self-realization),which all differ from recognition (...) of cultural identity. The normative implications will differ in these different contexts. (shrink)