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(Being compiled; this is just a start - but it may prove useful to indicate how we approach Rawls.)
| Rawls | Dooyeweerd Affirms | Dooyeweerd Critiques | Dooyeweerd Enriches |
|---|---|---|---|
| Justice | Near the kernel norm of the juridical aspect, hence very important. | But remember that each aspect, including the juridical, is interwoven with all aspects, and that the juridical perspective on its own has no basis for neither care nor faith (belief, commitment, aspiration, expectation, and the Divine), which are both important in shaping how we understand justice. | |
| Grounded in Kant. | Kant's main writings express the epitome of the Nature-Freedom Ground-motive, which is deeply flawed, especially in presupposing a fundamental opposition between order and freedom. This lays traps for Rawls. We can see this in Rawls' almost reducing justice to freedom. | Replant Rawls' theory into the more fertile soil of the Creation-Fall-Redemption ground-motive. There freedom is reconceived as multi-aspectual, the potential for meaningful and good functioning in each aspect - which may be considered separately and then brought together. | |
| Rawls' "Original Position" is that everyone operates from ignorance of their own good, their own needs, etc. | Yes, there can be no full theoretical knowledge, not "truth in itself". | Rawls presupposes theoretical knowledge and ignores pre-theoretical knowing, such as intuition. | Take account of our intuitive grasp of all the diverse meaningfulness (aspects) to understand what Rawls calls the "veil of ignorance". |
| Rawls' Original Position has two principles that must be woven together (see below). | Each expresses the norm of a different aspect, the juridical and ethical. | Bring in Dooyeweerd's understanding of Dooyeweerd's inter-aspect relationships. | |
| Rawls' first principle of his Oridingal Position: the "difference principle", in which rights, responsibilities, social advantages and resources can be assigned and distributed differently. | Just assignment and distribution is meaningful in the juridical aspect. | ||
| Each member of society has an equal on their society's goods. | Equal claim is fairly fundamental from the perspective of the juridical aspect; inequality (as opposed to injustice) is a problem in another aspect, the social. | Conflating aspects | Separate the social from the juridical aspects, and also recognise the quantitative aspect there, and understand the role of each in relation to the whole. |
| Rawls' second principle of the Original Position: maximise the propsects of the worst-off. Inequalities must be allowed only in a way that benefits the worst-off. | Care for the worst-off is meaningful in the ethical aspect, which retrocipatively impacts our functioning in the juridical aspect (and is a deeply Christian value). | As above, bring in Dooyeweerd's understanding of how the juridical and ethical aspects interplay, and also with the social and quantitative aspects, and all others, e.g. aesthetic aspect of harmony, economic aspect of frugality. | |
| More to be written. |
This page, 'http://www.dooy.info/ext/rawls.html', is part of a collection of pages that links to various thinkers, within The Dooyeweerd Pages, which explain, explore and discuss Dooyeweerd's interesting philosophy. Email questions or comments would be welcome.
Written on the Amiga and Protext in the style of classic HTML.
Copyright (c) at all dates below Andrew Basden. But you may use this material subject to conditions.
Created: 23 July 2025 Last updated: