Greetings all,
Today is a current projects break day, but next Monday we have our own
Tim Smartt to talk to us about:
Meta-Theoretical Justification: Onora O'Neill and John Rawls on
Kantian Constructivism'
Abstract
In a number of books and articles Onora O’Neill has presented a
criticism of John Rawls’s meta-theory that guides his reasoning about
justice, that is, his constructivism. She has argued that her own
brand of constructivism is both more internally coherent and a more
promising framework within which to locate the inclusivist and
universalist aspirations of Kantian practical philosophy. In this
paper I defend Rawls’s brand of constructivism against O’Neill’s
criticism. I identify the core difference between Rawls and O’Neill as
being the issue of whether a constructivist theory needs to be, or
indeed can be, constructively justified at the meta-theoretical level.
I argue that while O’Neill’s constructivism is self-defeating, Rawls’s
constructivism differs significantly in its approach to the criterion
that a meta-theoretical justification ought to fulfil, and this
renders it more coherent. As well as this, I draw attention to a
potentially exclusionist stance within O’Neill’s meta-theoretical work
and contrast this with a reading of Rawls that highlights his
implicitly inclusive meta-theoretical stance.
See you all there, 1.00-2.30, philosophy common room, everything as it
ever was.
Best
Kristie
Dr. Kristie Miller
University of Sydney Research Fellow
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry and
The Centre for Time
The University of Sydney
Sydney Australia
Room 411, A 18
[email protected]
[email protected]
Ph: 02 93569663
http://homepage.mac.com/centre.for.time/KristieMiller/Kristie/Home_Page.html
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