Chapter 12 Flashcards
hypothetical situation employed by Rawls to compare competing principles of social justice by asking which would be chosen by rational individuals were they to be situated behind a veil of ignorance that deprives them of knowledge of their fortunes in the social and natural lottery, as well as of their conception of well-being.
Original Position:
literally means “rule of the father.” It is used in feminist philosophy to mean a society that is structured according to sexual inequality, with men being advantaged and women disadvantaged; in this feminist sense, it need not have male political leaders, although men usually occupy more positions of political power than do women.
Patriarchy:
factor that divides members of society into groups that have different status or resources; examples include sex, race, and class.
Social Cleavage:
informal rules about how people ought to behave in a society. Examples include rules of etiquette, clothing, and social interaction. They can become internalized, such that people prefer to comply with them – for example, many people feel embarrassed about passing wind in public and do not wish to do so.
Social Norms:
concerned with how things ought to be or what people ought to do.
Normative:
theory of social justice devised by Ronald Dworkin, which evaluates distributions by asking whether they could have emerged from a hypothetical market process.
Equality of Resources:
being who has a will – although not necessarily a rational will – to do something.
Agent:
pertains when an individual can rationally choose his or her acts and omissions in accord with his or her own judgment and inclinations-where “rationality” implies at least a minimal capacity to understand and foresee the probable consequences of those acts and omissions.
Autonomy:
an individual has liberty in a purely descriptive sense in relation to a give domain of acts and omissions if, and only if, he or she can do as he or she wishes within that domain. If the individual chooses whatever act or omission he or she likes, then it follows that other people are not preventing that individual from acting, or omitting to act, as he or she chooses. The domain of conduct in relation to which an individual has liberty may be extensive or narrow, depending on the context. As long as he or she can choose even a single act or omission, however, that individual is at liberty in relation ot that particular act or omission. It is a separate question whether the individual’s liberty has value in a given context.
Liberty:
refers to the positive assertion of differences in the public space and it is seen as the first symbolic step towards the full inclusion of minority groups.
Recognition:
literally, this means the separation of a group (or individuals) from other groups (or individuals). Racial segregation was enforced by the “Jim Crow” laws in the USA (1876-1965) and was a central feature of the apartheid regime in South Africa (1948-1994).
Segregation:
refers to areas of life that are properly subject to political interference and which should be regulated by principles of justice. Sometimes referred to as the political sphere.
Public Sphere:
refers to areas of life, such as the family, that are thought, in classical liberalism, to be separate from political influence and interference.
Private Sphere:
refers to the process by which social norms affect our lives, either by shaping the options that are available or to appropriate for us, or by affecting the way in which we interpret society, understand ourselves, and form preferences.
Social Construction:
freeing of an individual or group from slavery or bondage. Where slavery or bondage is, in the first instance, legally recognized, the term has a clear meaning: either the abolition of the law, or the granting of rights under the law, when, for example, a slave is freed by his or her master. In contemporary use, the term is often more a matter of overcoming social or cultural bonds, rather a grant of legal rights, and may be a matter of degree rather than absolute.
Emancipation:
