So, i been thinking about Young's arguments against impartiality and i may have just been thinking about it too much, but it kinda seems like she's constructed straw man out of impartiality. She talks about impartiality as requiring that we exclude the particularities of life. Like on pg.111, "Precisely because the virtues of impartiality and universality define the civic public, that public must exclude human particularity." When i've been thinking about impartiality i've been thinking about taking all particularities into account, but ignoring one's own position in the affair. Less of a complete abstraction from life, but an abstraction from your position in it and an acknowledgment of all arguments, including your own. She talks about it denying feelings, but i always thought about it as putting your desires and feeling on equal footing with everyone else's. This is what i've been imagining Rawls is talking about with his veil of ignorance, as well. Either i'm confused about Rawls or im confused about Young or Young's confused about Rawls. Either way i could use some help sorting this out.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
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2 comments:
I see where you are coming from and I definitely agree that it is confusing. When addressing impartiality, Young is saying that the Original Position does not address their particularities, such as race, class, gender. When Rawls discusses this he says that no one will know who they will be based on the veil of ignorance and that they will not use things such as race, class, or gender to make certain rules or anything when creating their basic social contract. However, if these issues should arise after the original position, then Rawls would suggest creating things like social programs, or distributive justice. I could totally be wrong here, but it is just my take on this issue.
I think the point of the veil of ignorance is to keep one from seeing the other members of the society, and thus causes one to create a social contract that suits and benefits everyone instead of just one certain group. correct me if i'm wrong (because my paper is riding on this.)
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