We have a lot of anxiety in the United States about the quality and effectiveness of our educational system, particularly at the elementary and secondary levels. And the anxiety is justified. A large percentage of our school-age population lives in high poverty neighborhoods, and they are served by schools that fail to allow them to …
French economic inequalities
France is one of the more affluent countries in the OECD, but it continues to contain significant poverty and meaningful inequalities of income, wealth, and life outcomes. The past several years of rising unemployment have worsened these circumstances. A lot of this variation occurs across the lines of ethnicity and national origins; immigrant communities in …
Rawls and the history of economics
What did John Rawls know about the history of political economy? In particular, how much did he know about classical political economy, including especially the theories of Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Marx, or Mill? It appears from his writings and lectures that he was generally familiar with the most basic theoretical positions and debates in classical …
Rawls and economics
A topic of continuing interest to me is the role that serious engagement with economic theory played in the formation and development of John Rawls's thought (link). To what extent were important aspects of the theory of "Justice as Fairness" influenced by elements of economic theory? I'm inclined to think that we can look at …
Did Rousseau have a sociology?
Political philosophers ask a small number of core questions: for example, what constitutes the moral basis of political authority? How should the values of individual liberty and community wellbeing be balanced? And we might imagine that the most insightful political philosophers work on the basis of an astute understanding of the social world. Political philosophy, …
Race and racism
Race has been a fundamental fact in American society for centuries, since the sixteenth century with the arrival of African slaves. And many would observe that racism has been a part of that history from beginning to end. These are distinct statements; it is possible for race to be a factor, without racism being present. …
Rawls on Rousseau 1973, 1975
As noted in an earlier post, John Rawls delivered a fundamentally important course on the history of political philosophy at Harvard throughout much of his career. (See the earlier post for more about the course and for a set of notes on the section on Marx.) The 1973 course followed these main topics: The nature …
Rousseau the democrat
Rousseau's political philosophy probably represents the richest and most adequate view of the moral foundations of the state of any of the great figures in the history of political thought. But it is also complex and opaque. Rousseau is usually cast as falling within the social contract tradition, according to which the legitimacy of the …
Movements for social justice
It was argued in an earlier post that social progress is best pursued through incremental, gradual steps that can be evaluated as we go along (post). It was also suggested that programs of change that are bent on achieving huge systemic change and the establishment of a complex new set of institutions are unwise, because …
A property-owning democracy
John Rawls offered a general set of principles of justice that were formally neutral across specific institutions. However, he also believed that the institutions of a "property-owning democracy" are most likely to satisfy the two principles of justice. So what is a property-owning democracy? In Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001) Rawls offered a more explicit discussion …
