Sublime

In many ways, a social structure that appears at a distance to be governed objectively by certain clear and fair principles will, in reality, be composed of human beings who’ll apply those principles subjectively. And that, of course, is what we have already. In fact, that kind of system has always existed — no matter what name it may bear.

Indeed, I will argue that liberty in the broad sense requires judges and officials, when applying legal principles, to assert norms of reasonableness. Otherwise, self-interested people will use law to claim almost anything.

Rawls and Heidi simply assume that there is some “unencumbered self,” as political philosopher Michael Sandel puts it,2 independent of and prior to the affiliations that constitute my identity, and that we can somehow imagine the preferences of these unencumbered selves as they organize themselves politically. But, in fact, we only have preferences

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In philosophical circles, Rawls’s approach is described as asserting the “priority of the right over the good.” On this view, our rights define a framework within which we can each pursue our beliefs about how to live; in contrast to the alternative, where we start with a particular conception of the good, and design rights in order to promote it.

Concerning Locke, for example, Rommen writes, “Locke substitutes for the traditional idea of the natural law as an order of human affairs, as a moral reflex of the metaphysical order of the universe revealed to human reason in the creation as God’s will, the conception of natural law as a rather nominalistic symbol for a catalog or bundle of

Starting in the 1960s, the social and legal institutions of America were remade to try to eliminate unfair choices by people in positions of responsibility. The new legal structures reflected a deep distrust of human authority in even its more benign forms—a teacher’s authority in the classroom, or a manager’s judgments about who’s doing the job,

The three political lies: 1.From Hobbes, government is not about the common good or providing basic needs. It is about preserving property. 2.From Hobbes and Locke, economics is a moral-free math. Humanity’s equality need not translate to economic equity. 3.From Smith, justice is retributive—it is about punishing rule-breakers—not about making

It seems that the values divide underpinning the opposition between liberalism and authoritarianism – with populism somewhere on the spectrum – rules out any real prospect for a politics of the good life. In times of ‘culture wars’ and political polarization, appeals to a sphere of shared meaning seem to ring hollow.