Reconstructing Rawls

The Kantian Foundations of Justice as Fairness

Robert S. Taylor

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780271037714
• eBook ISBN: 9780271056715
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

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

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Acronyms
• Introduction
• Part One: Kantian Affinities
• Part Two: Reconstructing Rawls
• Part Three: Kantian Foundations
• Conclusion: Justice as Fairness as a Universalistic Kantian LIberalism
• References
• Index
• Back Cover