Reconstructing Rawls : : The Kantian Foundations of Justice as Fairness / / Robert S. Taylor.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Taylor, Robert S.,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (360 p.)

Reconstructing Rawls has one overarching goal: to reclaim Rawls for the Enlightenment-more specifically, the Prussian Enlightenment. Rawls's so-called political turn in the 1980s, motivated by a newfound interest in pluralism and the accommodation of difference, has been unhealthy for autonomy-based liberalism and has led liberalism more broadly toward cultural relativism, be it in the guise of liberal multiculturalism or critiques of cosmopolitan distributive-justice theories. Robert Taylor believes that it is time to redeem A Theory of Justice's implicit promise of a universalistic, comprehensive Kantian liberalism. Reconstructing Rawls on Kantian foundations leads to some unorthodox conclusions about justice as fairness, to be sure: for example, it yields a more civic-humanist reading of the priority of political liberty, a more Marxist reading of the priority of fair equality of opportunity, and a more ascetic or antimaterialist reading of the difference principle. It nonetheless leaves us with a theory that is still recognizably Rawlsian and reveals a previously untraveled road out of Theory-a road very different from the one Rawls himself ultimately followed.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Preface and Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Acronyms -- Introduction -- Part 1: Kantian Affinities -- 1 Rawls's Kantianism -- Part 2: Reconstructing Rawls -- 2 The Kantian Conception of the Person -- 3 The Priorities of Right and Political Liberty -- 4 The Priority of Civil Liberty -- 5 The Priority of Fair Equality of Opportunity -- 6 The Difference Principle -- Part 3: Kantian Foundations -- 7 Justifying the Kantian Conception of the Person -- 8 The Poverty of Political Liberalism -- Conclusion -- References -- Index