A constraint on political cognitivism is that it give some basis for responding to certain worries. These worries prompt political liberals such as Rawls to deny that the search for truth can provide a shared basis for a conception of justice in a pluralistic democratic society.2 On this view, a pluralistic democratic state that avoids the authoritarian use of state power should be neutral abou...

In this paper, I examine the claim that Rawls’s overlapping consensus is too narrow to allow most mainstream religions’ participation in political discourse. I do so by asking whether religious exclusion is a consequence of belief or action, using conversion as a paradigm case. After concluding that this objection to Rawls is, in fact, defensible, and that the overlapping consensus excludes bot...

The intensified nurse migration leads to severe problems for the health care systems in many developing countries. Using the Philippines as an example, this paper will address the question of global nurse migration from a philosophical perspective. John Rawls' liberal and Michael Walzer's communitarian theory of justice will be examined in view of the ethical problem of nurse migration. In line...

In this paper I offer a conceptual characterization of the idea “sense justice” as suitable motivational basis for respect principles justice in force given society, and argue that similar concern can be found not only John Rawls, who expressely talks about notion, but also Aristotle. My main contention is both thinkers invite readers to conceive sense an attitude admitting various degrees, ran...

Dædalus Summer 2008 ‘Cosmopolitanism’ is not–or not yet –the name of a determinate political philosophy. Although many contemporary theorists have put forward views that they describe as cosmopolitan, there is little agreement among them about the central elements of a cosmopolitan position. Almost nobody advocates the development of the kind of global state that would give the idea of ‘world c...

What is a just society? How to distribute limited resources, opportunities, access, guarantees, and so forth, to members of a community who are of vastly different natural and acquired capacities? Perhaps the most promising approach to an answer is that suggested by John Rawls. Rawls’ famous thoughtexperiment, in A Theory of Justice – the invitation to take up the perspective of “the original p...

The present paper revisits the issue of rational decision making in John Rawls’ original position. Drawing on Isaac Levi’s theory of decision, I discuss how we can defend Rawls against John C. Harsanyi’s charge that maximin reasoning in the original position is irrational. The discussion suggests that systematic application of Levi’s theory is likely to have important consequences for ethics an...