Well, we can use it as a start in exploring the “for all practical purposes” implications of Rawls’s reflections on “fairness” given an issue like abortion.
How would someone partial to Rawls’s thinking react to the manner in which I deem fairness to be embedded in a particular political prejudice derived from “I” as an existential contraption out in a particular world historically, culturally and with respect to one’s actual personal experiences?
But it’s not a leap. Rawls is painstaking to a fault. But you not only didn’t read a word of his, you didn’t even read the paper about Rawls.
How painstaking can one be in dealing with conflicting goods like this? How painstaking can you be in intertwining his idea of “fairness” in the abortion wars?
Sooner or later one must take/make that existential leap to the natural right of babies to be born, or the political right of women to abort them. Or, in a nation that embraces one or another legislative rendition of “moderation, negotiation and compromise”, cobble together laws that basically reflect the idea that “you’re right from your side, I’m right from mine”.
Unless they are able to think themselves into believing that the reasonable [and virtuous] man or woman is in fact obligated to argue that it is either one way or the other.
Instead [in my view] we are given another “general description” of fairness here:
Rawls general theory would certainly not preclude legal abortion, however. He would allow only persons (and adult ones at that) to be party to his social contract. That paper will probably argue that we in some way accept fetuses as persons. Which of course, many people do. Not so many in Cambridge, where Rawls worked.
Philosophy, yes, but mostly political history tells us a lot about fairness. Rawls was Kantian in a very important way, but no one is perfect.
Nothing is actually pinned down with points that don’t make the conflicting goods go away. Just as nothing was actually pinned down by Kant. But Kant was able to concoct a “transcending” font [which most call God] such that whatever you choose to do on this side of the grave there is a frame of mind actually able to determine if it was in sync categorically and imperatively with “the right thing to do”. The rational thing to do.
Whether asking or answering the question “how ought one to live?” is or is not a philosophical problem, will depend on which philosopher you ask.
I meant that you not knowing how to live is not a philosophical problem. And by the way, you can’t get more general than asking how one ought to live.
So basically you are arguing that you are qualified to tell me that my pondering how “I” ought to live is not a philosophical problem.
While others like Aristotle and Kant are eminently qualified to proffer us “general descriptions” of “fairness” and “virtue”.
And the whole point of my asking a general question like this is to precipitate discussions that are brought down to earth. How ought one to live in this particular world interacting with others in this particular context.
The trouble with Existentialists is that they want cred for wandering around the mean streets of a world without God. Keepin’ it real an’ keepin’ it together. Geralizations (knowledge) is introduced at every turn, one would hope. In a democracy, the ones who know how it works are the ones who win. An increasingly liberal society is all but inevitable when democracy is fueled by education and affluence. And generalizations. American society is young, though, so it has a ways to go.
Another “general description” of existentialists, democracy and “an increasingly liberal society”.
But: Pertaining to what particular human interactions in what particular context regarding what particular conflicting goods?