Date Thesis Awarded
4-2016
Access Type
Honors Thesis -- Access Restricted On-Campus Only
Degree Name
Bachelors of Arts (BA)
Department
Philosophy
Advisor
Christopher A. Freiman
Committee Members
M. Victoria Costa
Julie R. Agnew
Abstract
In Political Liberalism , John Rawls did not try to fix public reason on a single political conception of justice. I disagree. This project shows that adopting a political liberal framework yields a political conception of justice with three principles of justice: equal basic rights and liberties, fair equality of opportunity and the bounded efficiency principle. The resulting theory is largely similar to justice as fairness, yet it differs in four key ways. First, equal basic rights and liberties is expanded to include a more robust set of positive political liberties. Second, fair equality of opportunity is not strictly political; rather, it can pierce the veil of nonpublic life if this aspect of life significantly impacts the basic structure of society. Third, the difference principle is rejected by a politically liberal framework, replace by the bounded efficiency principle. Last, the principles of justice are not lexicographically ordered. Instead, situations in which one principle conflicts with another are adjudicated by an appeal to general intuitionism.
Recommended Citation
Rudebusch, George Eric, "Political Liberalism and a Theory of Justice: Recasting Justice as Fairness as a Political Conception of Liberal Justice" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Theses. William & Mary. Paper 959.
https://scholarworks.wm.edu/honorstheses/959
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