[lit-ideas] Re: Why us?
- From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 09:26:36 -0400
John McCreery wrote:
"What I conceive as universal values may be quite different in many
respects from those of, say, religious or market fundamentalists. Does
faith in my God or my Market override the nation's merely political
claims?"
It seems to me that it depends on what is meant by a 'political claim.'
I am currently reading John Rawls' _Political Liberalism_. At the heart
of this book is the claim that there are different kinds of liberalism
and that what we ought to be aiming for is the political kind. A
political liberalism assumes a society where there will be competing and
non-translatable fundamental commitments. Also assuming the desire to
avoid violence, a political liberalism occurs with the formation of a
shared discourse, a political discourse, that aims to allow for the
pursuit of those fundamental commitments by providing a venue for
discussion when those commitments conflict. This is still the
liberalism Rawls articulated in _A Theory of Justice_ but it is more
nuanced in allowing for the possibility of legitimate yet
incommensurable fundamental commitments co-existing within the
political.
On this account, the political, and the claims made from within it,
cannot be defined in advance except to say that it is what the various
interested parties agree on. Given this state of affairs, the political
claims made within a society would account for the various 'faiths'
involved. This does not mean that there wouldn't be conflict but it
would be of an acceptable sort. If a time came where one's fundamental
commitments overrode the political, one would in effect be abdicating
ones place in that society.
I disagree with some aspects of Rawls' account of liberalism, but I
think he is on to something with this notion of the political.
Sincerely,
Phil Enns
Toronto, ON
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