Ricœur, Rawls and the Aporia of the Just

Feriel Kandil
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Feriel Kandil: Aix-Marseille Univ., CNRS, EHESS, Centrale Marseille, AMSE, https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/users/kandil

No 1849, AMSE Working Papers from Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France

Abstract: The article conducts a comparative study between Ricœur’s and Rawls’ thought on justice. Whereas Ricoeur focuses on the dialectic between the just and the good, Rawls is concerned with the ideal conditions under which a universal consensus on the principles of justice may be reached. Ricœur gives much importance to reading Rawls. He offers many commentaries, especially on Rawls’s major contribution, A Theory of Justice. This chapter focuses on such comments and on the relating paradoxical interpretation of Rawls’s approach to justice Ricœur provides. First, this chapter suggests that, with his interpretation of Rawls’s major contribution, Ricœur contributes to put the light on the conflicts between the just and the good. These conflicts are the key elements of what may be referred to as the aporia of the just, which consists in the contradictory requirements coming from the just considered as a virtue of either institutions or individuals. Second, this chapter shows that whereas the aporia is a major problem in Rawls’ approach to justice, it is at the core of the dialectic dynamic Ricœur sees within moral life. In his work, the aporia leads to what we call the three paradoxes of justice, which are the paradoxes with legal, distributive and political justice. Considering such paradoxes, Ricœur takes the ethics of practical wisdom as a necessary recourse. The latter provides fair decision makers with the resources needed for the aporia to be, if not resolved, at least eased.

Keywords: social justice; distributive justice; legal justice; political justice; the just; the good; principles of justice; Kant; Aristotle; Ricœur; Rawls; political paradox; sense of justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39 pages
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe and nep-pol
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