I said: >I (and you, and indeed I think every single person on this list,
>including the religious ones if there are any) am also a
>philosophical liberal in the Enlightenment sense, that is, I accept
>the irreducible fact of irreconcible diversity about ends and
>conceptions of the good life, and draw from this the conclusion
>that government and society should be publically secular and
>nonreligious, also not dominated by any one group's conception of
>the good life.
> Your liberal credential is put into question, because you obviously
believe that the working-class conception of the good life (higher
wages, shorter working hours, less fear of unemployment, more safety
and environmental regulations, more workplace democracy, etc.) should
dominate government and society, rather than the ruling-class one
(bigger profit margins, lower taxes on profits, fewer safety and
environmental regulations, etc.) or the petty-bourgeois one
(meritocracy, technocracy, etc.).
A confusion, Yoshie. Firstly, the differences you cite are note on their face differences in conceptions of the good. Theya re rather differences in who should get the largest shares and who should bear the burdens of social life against a largely shared background that more income, control over one;s life, and health are part of at least a thin conception of the good. So differences about who should get agreed on goods and bads is not the same as differences about what is good or bad.
Philosophical liberalism is consistent with legislation that involves the attempt to realize various goals, including goals that ensue from various groups' conceptions of the good. We can legislate morality consitently with liberalism. The trick is to do it in a way that can be justifiedto others whether or not they share yourt conception of the good. This is they key notion of Rawls' idae oan overallping consensus, the centerpiece of his later work in Political Liberalism. The idea is clearly explained in Burton Dreben's useful essay inThe Cambridge Companion to Rawls. The point, though deep, is simple. It doesn't mater if I support a social welfare policy because i think it promotes the interest of the working class and you support it because you think that God tells us to help the poor,a s long as we can each recignize the other supports the policy for moral and not merely prudentail reasons,a nd as long as we are both committed to democratuc processes in deciding on polic
y.
> Moreover, there is always a great deal of tension between liberalism
and democracy in liberal democracy under capitalism (and perhaps also
under socialism, too),
So? This will only bother you if you expect all your ideals to mesh in a tension-free way. Life is about tradeoffs. get used to it
jks
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