Eyes wide shut: John Rawls's silence on racial justice

Ai-Thu Dang ()
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Ai-Thu Dang: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEE - Centre d'études de l'emploi - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche - Ministère du Travail, de l'Emploi et de la Santé

Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) from HAL

Abstract: Rawls spent his life developing and refining his Theory of justice. However, in other works published later (for example, Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness. A Restatement), Rawl's explicit remarks about racial disadvantage remain sparse and no systematic developments can be found. Why did Rawls say so little about racial justice or affirmative action, despite these being major issues in the society he lived ? Yet, the United States is a country marked by slavery and the struggle for black civil rights. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, we discuss the relevance of Rawls's explanations about his relative silence on racial justice. Second, we propose an interpretation to understand why Rawls did not address issues of racial justice more explicitly and in-depth.

Keywords: John Rawls's theory of justice; racial justice; affirmative action; ideal and non-ideal theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-10-09
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Published in Second International Conference "Economic Philosophy", Oneself and the other, Oct 2014, Strasbourg, France

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-00976384

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