Just Democracy: The Rawls-Machiavelli Programme

ISBN-13: 9781907301148 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 188 str.

Philippe Van Parijs

Opis

Philippe Van Parijs is one of the world's leading political philosophers. In this book, he argues that the purpose of democracy should be to promote justice - we need not just democracy (in the sense of unqualified democracy) but a just democracy. Machiavelli and Rawls must be brought together. In a series of provocative and timely essays, he explores what creating such a just democratic political system would involve in order to tackle such issues as intergenerational justice, multiculturalism and linguistic diversity. He illustrates his arguments with examples drawn from the European Union and his native Belgium.

We dont just need democracy. We need just democracy. Among the countless ways in which democracies could be organised, we must not try to adopt the most democratic ones. We must go instead for those that offer the best prospect of making our societies and our world more just. This is the core of the Rawls-Machiavelli programme forcefully advocated and vividly illustrated in this book, a powerful alliance between Rawlsian thinking about social justice and Machiavellian thinking about political institutions.For example, how could our political institutions be reformed in order to better serve intergenerational justice? And how should political institutions be shaped to best fit the specific circumstances of deeply divided societies, or of multilingual countries, or of the European Union? This is the sort of question that is being addressed in this unusual combination of rigorous philosophical arguments, detailed historical accounts and bold political proposals.