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Rawls and Sandel, the Common Good and the Sense of Justice

Maeng, Jooman 1

1중앙대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to focus on Sandel's critic of Rawls's deontological liberalism and liberalistic public philosophy, including his political liberalism. Rawls adheres to the justice as fairness based 'the priority of the right over the good' according to Kantian moral constructivism and the political liberalism tailored to the fact of the reasonable pluralism regarded as characteristic of modern democratic society, by distinguishing the private/personal good and the common good, the public good and the common good, political and nonpolitical values, and the private and public reason. But Sandel maintains that our deliberations about justice as rights cannot proceed without reference to the conceptions of the good that find expression in the many cultures and traditions within which those deliberations take place. As a result, he adheres the priority of the good over the right, and reduces the common good to the public good focused on the sharing in self-government, civic virtues, dependence of liberty on self government, and political participation. Sandel says that Rawls' thinking cannot be maintained because his deontological liberalism and political liberalism separate our identity as citizens from our identity as persons, although our reflections about justice cannot reasonably be detached from our reflections about the nature of the good life and the highest human ends. In this paper I claim that in the problems of justice, Rawls's deontological liberalism and political conception of justice are superior to Sandel's communitarian republicanism and I call my attention to a capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good to which Rawls attaches great importance.

Citation status

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