Abstract

GONDIM, Elnora. John Rawls: the liberty of ancients and the liberty of moderns - presuppositions of coherentist justification. discus.filos [online]. 2010, vol.11, n.17, pp.151-165. ISSN 0124-6127.

The emphasis in the individual freedom and the equality of all citizens as it appears in the two Rawlsian principles of justice causes that justice as fairness be part of an articulation between the individual freedom and the collective one as explicitly seen in the two moral faculties contained in the conception of person of the Rawlsian theory, that is, in the idea of rationality and in the conception of reasonableness. Therefore, Rawls elaborates an articulation between the public and the private inserting justice as fairness in such a way that he is able to integrate the old tradition of freedom as well as the modern one. In justice as fairness, the use of the method of reflective equilibrium, autonomy, freedom, the normative concept of person, pure procedimentalism, the lexicographical order attributed to the first principle, the political conception of justice and the public base of justification, show that Rawls considers the freedom of the ancients in the view of the freedom of the moderns and, on the basis of this argument, provides strong conceptual support for his model of justification: a coherentist one.

Keywords : freedom; ancients; moderns; coherentism.

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