| Summary: | In this essay I examine the concept of liberty as expressed by the liberal political philosopher John Rawls in his book A Theory of Justice, and by the feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young in her book Justice and the Politics of Difference. The purpose of this study is to investigate the subject that is the different understandings of liberty, and the theories of justification that underlies them, in contemporary political philosophy. I will achieve this aim through a content analysis of the two books named above, which means that I, firstly, will try to describe and clarify the authors’ respective positions. Secondly, I will evaluate the strength in their arguments and then, in the final chapter of the essay, I will make a proposition of my own on what a reasonable understanding and justification of liberty might be. One of my conclusions is that Rawls’ position is best to be understood in a negative way, as the absence of coercion, and that it is highly influenced by a politics of universal dignity. And another one, that Young holds a positive view in which liberty equals self-realization and self-determination, and as the title of her book suggests, a politics of difference. As for the justification of liberty, it is the thought experiment that Rawls calls the “veil of ignorance” with which he justifies the principle of equal liberty as well as its precedence. And Young, although not explicating a theory of justification herself, seems to suggest a modified version of Habermas’ communicative ethics. Then, in the final chapter, I argue that the most reasonable alternative is a negative understanding of liberty, together with a politics of universal dignity that is quite similar to that of Rawls’.
|
|---|
