Conceito de pessoa em John Rawls: críticas e perspectivas

Abstract

One of the objectives of this research is to present to the reader the debate between communitarians (holists) and individualistic liberals (atomists), enlightening the assumptions defended by both regarding to their visions of person and society. From the reflection of the central elements of Rawls' theory in The Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993), we assessed the plausibility and sustainability of his doctrine towards his most prominent critics in the communitarianism area, among them, Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor, highlighting their main objections to Rawls's work, more precisely to the moral conception of person in the original position. We showed that the theory of justice as equity is compatible with the ontological and epistemological demands of contemporary complex societies, asserting that the moral agent when submitted to a situation of choice in the original position owns the sense of justice notion and empathy towards the other members of the society. Based on the criticism on Rawls by the communitarians, we proceeded on the defense of his fundamental assumptions, it means, in the plausibility of the complementarity between a deontological and teleological conception of society, in which the just and the good can be complementary, as a way of overcoming political conflicts, and thus providing the desired stability and unity of social institutions. We also emphasize the importance of the notion of person in the model of representation offered by Rawls and known as "original position" showing that Rawls's neocontractualist model does not correspond to an abstract or atomized conception of person. The main objective of this dissertation was to answer whether our choices of what is right or wrong come from a naturalized conception of person (innate knowledge) or from a political conception of (cultural) person, or even from the complementarity of both. If the hypothesis of complementarity between the two conceptions is confirmed, we will be able to answer those criticisms addressed to Rawls by the communitarians, showing that his theory is not abstract or atomistic. From these considerations, we analyzed the work Elements of Moral Cognition written by John Mikhail, his own interpretation of the rawlsian reflexive equilibrium and the naturalized conception of person, which states that human beings have an innate knowledge of a variety of rules, concepts, and moral principles or even legal ones. In the book Why Political Liberalism? by Paul Weithman, we worked on a political conception of person, highlighting the reformulation of Rawls's theory based on the work political Liberalism (1993), showing the distinction between the moral concept of person in A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993).