Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In Rawls’ seminal work, “A Theory of Justice,” he advances the claim that justice requires “equality in the social bases of self-respect.” My study examines and evaluates the actual empirical bases of respect and self respect in modern liberal-democratic societies. What are the roles of civil and political liberties (Rawls’ emphasis) as contrasted with meaningful employment, professional status, earned income, standard of living, gender, race/ethnicity, educational attainments, and economic independence in shaping the influences on the respect various groups receive in modern societies? My analysis moves between the norms that are supposed to govern the distribution of respect, as opposed to its real world dynamics. I suggest a way to reconcile these factors in a unified paradigm of the bases of respect for members of modern society. My goal is to use empirical research on the actual bases of respect to evaluate and reconsider the insights of political philosophy concerning the legitimate norms of respect and self respect in modern society. The larger point of this research is to integrate the results of social scientific empirical research with the more normative contributions of liberal-democratic political theory; this may help to bridge the well-known divide between the knowledge of facts and the knowledge of values. While neither facts nor values can be reduced to one another, I advance a model on which assertions of value must be informed and constrained by plausible accounts of the facts relevant to the realization of these values.