Posted on 12/01/2002 1:08:15 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Edited on 04/14/2004 10:05:39 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
If there is one political philosopher who worked tirelessly to shore up the justification for the welfare state, it was Harvard University's John Rawls, the author of "A Theory of Justice" (Harvard University Press, 1971), who died on Nov. 25. He was 81 and one of the most highly regarded contemporary political philosophers, from whose ideas doctoral dissertations and books in political theory and economy abound in great numbers.
(Excerpt) Read more at 2.ocregister.com ...
It depends on who died!
If most people are simply a product of their upbringing it makes no difference to society whether those who receive positive character traits from their upbringing become rich or not. If people have a choice and can change themselves then it is absolutely essential to reward those who make positive decisions. Since the nature verses nurture argument still rages on we have nothing to lose and potentially everything to gain by rewarding those who make good decisions.
All brilliant people. A couple of friends who also tutored with Rawls committed suicide. I've always been fascinated at the phenomena of very bright people rising to great heights but burning out early in life, much like shooting stars.
And I'm thankful that at least a couple of us were recruited to defend our country via covert ops.
Rawls' work was considered important early on (because of the need for some justification for the welfare state), but his recent work has largely been ignored. The reason for his popularity then, and his waning popularity now, has a lot to do with the way his ideas have played out in the United States and elsewhere.
Early on, Rawls provided a model of distributive justice that paid no heed to whether or not individuals deserved the benefits they were to receive. The notion of the equal distribution of primary goods (food, clothing, etc) was the mainstay of his political philosphy, and it provided an easy justification for the social policies of the 60s and 70s. His popularity at the time had a lot to do with the need for a social policy based upon some normative idea of justice.
Also, the author states that "before Rawls' works made their appearance, political philosophy had been deemed virtually dead." Granted, political philosphy has not seen great success in the 20th century, but one could hardly credit Rawls with its revival. It still hasn't been revived in any meaningful sense, and where things stand today has very little to do with Rawls and his work.
The trouble with Rawls is that his ideas have been discredited in practice. The welfare state - and the idea of a distributive form of justice that ignores whether or not individuals deserve the primary goods they receive at the hands of the state - has not produced the Utopia it promised. On the contrary, it has been a recipe for moral and ethical degradation, violence, as well as the destruction of ordered liberty. Our decaying inner cities are the most telling example of Rawls' political philosophy in practice. Since the 60s and 70s, we've rewarded everyone equally with the primary goods our country has produced, only to find that it has degraded those we've intended to help and fostered a climate of violence, irresponsibility, moral and ethical chaos.
None of this is mentioned in the article, of course, but it's important to know and to understand.
It is a good decision to tighten the cinch of the saddle on the horse one is about to mount. Many times, the benefit of a good decision is immediate and requires no further reward than the intended consequences that are achieved. i.e. "Virtue is its own reward". :^)
I fell the same way, but not strangely. Rawls and his "fellow travelers" held some influence for quite some time. His Utopian yoke can still be heard being drug around in the halls of Congress.
I believe this is just common sense.
Some people lean hard to the former; others lean hard to the latter.
But stating these are the two predominant intuitions says nothing about the proper or efficient role of government.
What "super"? Just "individual". (At least for Rand. Nietzsche, OTOH - yeah, definitely.) For an Objectivist it's fine to perform "altruistic" acts as long as you are trying to benefit yourself (directly or indirectly) or someone you value. This could even be something as seemingly altruistic as "making the world a safer place for my countrymen".
And for Nietzsche? The altruist hardly acts from disinterested motives in the first place. What he gains by acting "for the benefit of others" is the preservation of degenerate and decaying forms of life of which he is a part (since he has adopted the slave morality of altruism in the first place). And, of course, another part of this "slave morality" is the fact that the altruist is simply another herd animal; he helps the weak because he identifies with them and imagines himself as also being in a position of weakness. Altruism is motivated by fear.
Strong stuff, for sure. But Nietzsche wasn't known for his moderation or his love of "disinterested motives." If he were alive today, I'm sure that his opinion of Rawls would probably be similar to that of Mill - a "flathead" and a naive buffoon.
No state predicated upon the belief that the lazy may gorge themselves at a public trough built and paid for by the industrious can possible succeed for long.
That doesn't surprise me, though. I remember reading a number of essays written against Rawls, and the problems concerning his philosophy were evident even then.
Now if I could only remember who wrote them... :)
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