Słuszność a dobro w liberalizmie

Abstract

There is an important strand in the liberalism called procedural which is based on the principle of the priority of the right over the good. According to it, as expressed in the Rawls’s fundamental work The Theory of Justice, individuals in the original position, behind the veil of ignorance, do not know anything about their social location, talents and their own conceptions of the good. Due to such ignorance the persons would choose the society regulated by two principles of justice reflecting the priority of the right over the good. The critical approach to that proposition shows that the conception of the person deprived of the good is simply wrong. We are self-interpreting animals, which means that our identity depends on our self-understanding and that is not possible without the good because we define who we are in relation to the good which we find with others and in them. Man is not selfsufficient and any attempt to treat him so denies a crucial truth that he is a social animal and he cannot conceive his relationship with others in an atomistic terms. A purely instrumental view of society is misleading since it destroys both our communities and ourselves. Therefore we consider the liberal conception of person and society unacceptable and utopian because it refers to a person who does not exist and to a society which cannot survive.