Sebastiano Maffettone

Political liberalism Reasonableness and democratic practice

This paper aims to explore an important concept in the work of the later Rawls: the idea of the reasonable. While the concept has its roots in both Aristotle and Kant, Rawls develops a unique account of the reasonable in the light of his theory of political liberalism. The paper includes Rawlsian responses to the practical challenges of radical democrats on the one hand, and epistemological challenges to the reasonable on the other. It concludes that Rawls’s account of the reasonable helps to bridge the gap between liberal theory and democratic practice.

How to avoid the liaison dangereuse between post-colonialism and postmodernism

Post-colonial theories present narratives of discontent based on resentment toward colonial exploitation and cultural hegemony. The substance matter of post-colonial narratives (their first-order argument) is sound. Post-colonial theories often rely on a post-modern philosophical argumentative structure (their second-order argument). The second-order argument is not able to support the first-order argument. In particular, the nihilist consequences of post-modernism make impossible the construction of a (post-colonial) discourse through which the discontent is transformed in a basis for a reasonable political action. The lack of such a discourse is a source of intellectual despair and predisposes to political fragmentation. Moreover, protest without arguments often coincides with violence. Within a liberal view of justice it is possible to represent post-colonialism as a critical stance.

Liberalism and its critique Is the therapy worse than the disease

Starting with the assumption that liberalism is under attack both from political and from philosophical alternatives, this paper is limited to a discussion of one family of critical arguments toward liberalism, namely the arguments that stress the importance of process as contrasted with substance. According to these arguments philosophical and political liberalism is based on substantive principles of justice, whereas a proper democratic theory should be founded on more procedural theories of justice. Such criticism ranges from democratic deliberative approaches to republican theories of politics. I examine some of these critiques of liberalism - from Habermas to Cohen, Gutmann and Thompson, from Pettit to Sunstein and Michelman - and conclude that all of them arrive at a final impasse: either they smuggle into their critiques substantive parts of liberalism or their theories do not match our philosophical and political needs. That is why I maintain that sometimes the therapy (namely democratic deliberation and republicanism) can be worse than the disease (namely liberalism).

Rawls: 40 years later (1971–2011)

Let me, please, say a few words before I properly start my response. First, I want to thank the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) for this opportunity to discuss here my book Rawls: An Introduction (2010): for a non-American philosopher a special honor and a privilege. The honor and privilege are reinforced by the opportunity to discuss my work with two philosophers of outstanding level, Thomas Scanlon and David Rasmussen. I thank them for both the ingenuity and the patience with which they read my book, and I also thank our chair Jim Boettcher and the president of the APA (Eastern Division) Paul Guyer present in the room with many illustrious colleagues. It is the first time that I participate in an APA meeting, and I am full of admiration for the philosophical and organizational achievements of this conference. The title of my response is ‘Rawls: 40 years later’. These ‘40 years’ allude to the years that have passed since the publication of A Theory of Justice (1971), a milestone for political philosophy. Behind this transparent title, there is a twofold intention: (1) to shortly present the main object of my book to which I devote sections 2 and 3; (2) to try to respond to the comments raised by professors Scanlon and Rasmussen to which I devote sections 4, 5 and 6. This second task is of course the main goal of my presentation today, and forgive me please for an excusatio non petita: the high level of the commentators will automatically make it more difficult for me to respond at their same level. In presenting my book, I cannot avoid saying that working through Rawls’ intellectual legacy has been a life endeavor for me. I read TJ in the mid-1970s in the UK, during my postgraduate studies, and since then I have never stopped considering Rawls an insuperable source of inspiration. As an Italian, at that time I found Rawls’ views particularly helpful to overcome what I considered the main weakness of the cultural Zeitgeist (spirit

Global justification and local legitimation

This paper distinguishes between the concepts of justification and legitimation with a view to offering a normative standard for global justice compatible with cultural pluralism. According to this distinction, justification is presented as an idealized, substantive and top-down enterprise rooted in the moral and metaphysical substrate of a specific culture. On the other hand, legitimation has a procedural and factual connotation and derives its strength from the success of some culturally independent but historically situated practice (bottom-up approach). Building on this distinction, I argue that justification and legitimation should be made complementary for the sake of cross-cultural dialogue.

Il ruolo dei valori

Il presente contributo rappresenta l’intervento del Professor Maffettone al Forum del 2 Aprile 2009. L’autore affrontando il tema della centralita della sostenibilita nei valori della societa contemporanea, ripercorre il dibattito sull’etica dell’ambiente e propone la tesi che la sostenibilita presenta gli stessi problemi che gia c’erano nell’approccio fondazionale dell’etica ambientalistica.