What is Justice?: What is Justice?
From the day they are born, people's chances in life differ. Some inherit money, social status, and good health; others are given far less. Justice, for some, is about redistributing the benefits and burdens, and providing an equality of opportunity...
What Justifies the State?: Right to Dissent, The
Philosopher John supports the people's right to dissent against tyrannical regimes. The major problem Locke attributes to the state of nature without government is the difficulty of protecting personal property. The kind of government that is create...
What Justifies the State?: John Rawl's Theory of Justice
In the early 1970s John Rawls uses the tradition of social contract as the basis for creating an imagined group that must decide on the rules of justice behind a "veil of ignorance." It is Rawls' contention that people will generate just rules if fo...
What Justifies the State?: Call for Reasoned Public Debate, A
Communitarians have been accused of being conservative, of attempting to maintain a way of life that includes discrimination against women and minorities. For communitarians, such problems can be solved by reasoned public debate, as long as the subj...
What Justifies the State?: Social Contract Theory
Thomas Hobbes, 17th century philosopher, characterized life without government as a "war of all against all" in which life is "nasty, brutish, and short." People agree to form a government simply to protect themselves from each other. This act of co...
What Justifies the State?: Issues That Separate Liberals and Communitarians
Emphasis on the common good places communitarians in direct conflict with liberals who claim the state must leave people free to pursue their own values. Michael Sandel, Ronald Dworkin, and Charles Taylor "debate" the issue in a fascinating exchange...
What Justifies the State?: Communitarian Ideal: Nurturing Community Values, The
Certain obligations, communitarians assert, express the moral bonds that tie us to the traditions and culture of the community. Philosopher David Wong experienced these expectations growing up in a Chinese-American family. He was expected to contrib...
What Justifies the State?: Communitarian Ideal: Aristotle, The
The liberal view that government must be neutral and allow individuals the right to choose their own values and ends is criticized by communitarians. Communitarians believe in the organic nature of the state and the importance of belonging to a comm...
What Justifies the State?: Communitarian Ideal: Hegel, The
German philosopher Georg Hegel, like Aristotle, sees the family as the most basic human group. When children grow up and move beyond the family they form new bonds that attach them to the values of their culture. It is within the state, Hegel assert...