Citizenship, Individualism, and Democractic Politics  

Oleh:

Fullinwider, Robert K.

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Ethics: An International Journal of Social Political and Legal Philosophy vol. 105 no. 3 (Apr. 1995), page 497-515.
Topik: Kependudukan; Individualisme; Politik Demokratik

Ketersediaan

Perpustakaan Pusat (Semanggi) Nomor Panggil: EE44.2 Non-tandon: 1 (dapat dipinjam: 0) Tandon: tidak ada

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Critics of liberal theory complain that it gets off to a false start, making radically unsituated individuals-"isolated, rational contractors"-instead of socially situated persons its point of departure. I suspect this complaint is true of very few liberal theorists. It is certainly not true of John Rawls, who starts from the fact that a social order deeply "shapes the wants and aspirations that its citizens come to have. It determines in part the sort of persons they want to be as well as the sort of persons they are" (TJ, p. 259; also PL, p. 41). The shaping effects of a social order are "profound and pervasive, and present from birth" (TJ, pp. 7, 96; also PL, pp. 68, 222). Precisely because of this fact, the social theorists is faced with a daunting challenge, namely, to construct a special standpoint from which to ask and answer questions about the worth of the social order itself. For to say that the influence of our siciety upon us is "profound and pervasive" is to say among other things that by and large we come to hold values congruent with its basic arrangements, see the world through its prevailing concepts, and take for granted the privileges and advantages it confers upon us. If, then, we measure the worth of our social order by our values, we in effect measure the social order against itself. To ask truly searching and radical questions, or to take seriously and appreciate truly radical criticism, we need somehow to imagine ourselves out of our social embeddedness. We need a standpoint that has as little as possible of our society's structure already built into it.

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