The idea of justice within the political morality of liberal egalitarianism

Ivanović, Josip. (2016). The idea of justice within the political morality of liberal egalitarianism. PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Philosophy.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij filozofije) [mentor Raunić, Raul].

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Abstract

The paper presents a critical examination of the idea of justice, considering various levels of the concept’s understanding and application. The aim is to reaffirm justice as a moral and political value in a sense that can be provided with a philosophical foundation. The paper is divided into three major sections. The first section provides a critical overview of contemporary liberal-egalitarian theories in order to illustrate not only the diversity of different approaches but also a schism among them that holds back the development of a more comprehensive theory. As regards the disambiguation criteria of these theories, this part reflects upon the theories’ different referents, their various levels of abstraction and understandings of justice, as well as different means of achieving a (more) just society. The second part deals with the accumulation of capital that stands in the way of egalitarian aspirations to both strengthen equality and ensure just distribution, and to valorise the liberal ideals of equal opportunity and individual liberty within the capitalist context of a supposedly free market. In the latter half of this section, the concept of market socialism is elaborated through several arguments in favour of and against this liberal-egalitarian concept. This concept is introduced in order to shed light on the reasons why numerous prominent theorists and philosophers held this conception as more just than the existing liberal-capitalist system or as more compatible with purely liberal principles and values. The third section focuses on the idea of justice as a moral value itself, its moral-epistemological status, and its different popular conceptions that have played an important role in theoretical discussions concerning egalitarianism and liberal social justice over the past few decades. Beginning with the Kantian constructivism present in Rawls’s version – through numerous critiques of that conception – this part describes and questions the concept of integrated moral epistemology offered by Dworkin. Following this, the author shows that a 'de-metaphysised' ethics can neither be equated with a conception of justice as mutual advantage, nor becomes lost in an Archimedean scepticism. However, some of the major aspects of Dworkin’s moral objectivism are refuted in this section. The paper ends with a conclusion synthesising the previous three sections. It defines justice as implied by Rawls’s liberal egalitarianism but applies it to a broader moral-epistemological spectrum. Ultimately, the paper identifies the need for further research into this topic: work that would elaborate and answer these questions which lie on the horizon of both society and metaphysics.

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