Religious Political Parties and the Limits of Political Liberalism

Political parties have only recently become a subject of investigation in political theory. In this paper I analyse religious political parties in the context of John Rawls’s political liberalism. Rawlsian political liberalism, I argue, overly constrains the scope of democratic political contestation and especially for the kind of contestation channelled by parties. This restriction imposed upon political contestation risks undermining democracy and the development of the kind of democratic ethos that political liberalism cherishes. In this paper I therefore aim to provide a broader and more inclusive understanding of ‘reasonable’ political contestation, able to accommodate those parties (including religious ones) that political liberalism, as customarily understood, would exclude from the democratic realm. More specifically, I first embrace Muirhead and Rosenblum’s (Perspectives on Politics 4: 99–108 2006) idea that parties are ‘bilingual’ links between state and civil society and I draw its normative implications for party politics. Subsequently, I assess whether Rawls’s political liberalism is sufficiently inclusive to allow the presence of parties conveying religious and other comprehensive values. Due to Rawls’s thick conceptions of reasonableness and public reason, I argue, political liberalism risks seriously limiting the number and kinds of comprehensive values which may be channelled by political parties into the public political realm, and this may render it particularly inhospitable to religious political parties. Nevertheless, I claim, Rawls’s theory does offer some scope for reinterpreting the concepts of reasonableness and public reason in a thinner and less restrictive sense and this may render it more inclusive towards religious partisanship.     

Bernard Williams: Political Realism and the Limits of Legitimacy

Abstract: A central component of Bernard Williams' political realism is the articulation of a standard of legitimacy from within politics itself: LEG. This standard is presented as basic, inherent in all political orders and the best way to underwrite fundamental liberal principles particular to the modern state, including basic human rights. It does not require, according to Williams, a wider set of liberal values. In the following, I show that where Williams restricts LEG to generating only minimal political protections, seeking to isolate his account of political legitimacy from a range of liberal principles, this is neither internal to, nor necessarily demanded by, the specifically political account of LEG. Instead, the limitation depends upon his wider ethical thought.     

政治的优先性及其限度——对《政治自由主义》一个理论预设的反思

罗尔斯的《政治自由主义》不仅是只在政治的范围内、而且是直接在政治的范围内运作,因而除了主张政治的独立性,它事实上还同时预设了政治的优先性。但由于政治与人性的内在关联不再是现代社会的共识,疏离于政治与强调政治的优先性就成了两种对立的政治哲学思路。政治自由主义强调政治的优先性,是要优先考虑政治的背景制度和合理的政治关系,因为由此构成的政治社会是一种人们应当共享的、内在的政治之善。但政治的优先性被限制在正义问题的理论建构方法与思维方式上,它并不在实质性的正义原则中对公民课以积极参与政治的责任,这就使得《政治自由主义》在两种对立的政治哲学思路之间取得了某种平衡。     

Professional Autonomy in the Health Care System

Professional autonomy interferes at a structural level with the variousaspects of the health care system. The health care systems that can bedistinguished all feature a specific design of professional autonomy,but experience their own governance problems. Empirical health caresystems in the West are a nationally coloured blend of ideal type healthcare systems. From a normative perspective, the optimal health caresystem should consist of elements of all the ideal types. A workableoptimum taking national values into account could be attained bygovernance structures that also introduce elements from other ideal typesystems. Thus a normative approach to medical practice guaranteeing anessential degree of professional autonomy for a relationship of trustbetween the patient and the physician, could be combined with anefficient and equitable allocation of health care resources.     

The Autonomy of the Health Professional: An Introduction

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -     

Prescriptions: Autonomy,Humanism and the Purpose of Health Technology

My purpose is to examine two of the foundations of medical ethics: the principle of autonomy and the concept of the human. I also investigate the extent to which health technology makes autonomy and humanness possible. I begin by underlining Illich's point that the same health technology designed to promote health and autonomy also is pathogenic. I proceed to analyse the Kantian concept of autonomy, a concept which is closely associated with health and which continues to determine current ethical thinking. In so doing, I uncover an unexpected ontological function of health technology, a function described in Heidegger's work on technology. Based on this discovery, I suggest that calls for Kantian autonomy may often be self-defeating or even sometimes harmful. I conclude by calling for continued ethical vigilance, but also for a questioning of the hitherto virtually unquestionable concepts of ethics and humanness which may themselves play a role in our era's greatest problems.     

Re-Evaluating Professional Autonomy in Health Care

Professional autonomy, as the symbol of the traditional freedom ofdecision-making of medical professionals is criticized. This essayexamines the critique. It analyses the underlying assumption that theautonomy of health professionals is incompatible with the need fororganisation and management in order to control rising health carecosts. It is argued that the concept of professional autonomy should beredefined, not through restricting the decision-making freedom ofindividual health professionals, but through expanding the concept intothe sphere of management, so that managers will take responsibility forpatient care.     

政治自由主义和公共理性的局限性

这篇论文分析了政治自由主义的局限性.这一点是通过批判其公共理性的不足来阐明的.这个论述分三部分来进行:第一部分分析公共理性和话语,第二、三部分分别进行民主缺陷和社会缺陷的解释.这些缺陷被分析为是对公民参与政治社会条件的一个根本限制.因此这个分析集中于过去十年最有影响的政治哲学家 J.罗尔斯的公共理性理论.这篇论文认为在他的理论中有两个缺陷:一是随着个体向社会的不完全整合而带来的缺陷--民主缺陷;二是与低估正义的社会分配维度相关的缺陷--社会缺陷.     

青少年患者自主权的伦理合理性及其限度

青少年患者是否享有自主权,这在当代无论是理论还是实践上都是一个广为争议的话题.文章从伦理的视角时青少年患者自主权存在的伦理合理性进行了论证,作者认为,青少年患者自主权的存在不仅具有契约论、目的论和道义论的基础,而且也是尊重青少年身心发展规律的要求.当然,任何权利都有其限度,青少年患者自主权不得超越病人福利原则、不伤害原则和公正原则的限制.     

Theological and Secular Meta-Narratives of Politics: Anabaptist Origins Revisited (Again)

Until recently, scholars both friendly and hostile to Anabaptism have agreed that its origins and development to the present time could be rendered in a coherent, continuous narrative, making Anabaptist identity relatively unproblematic. This consensus has broken down. The present essay seeks to show how newer, ostensibly "objective" social-science accounts of Anabaptism in fact offer a secular counter-narrative to the Anabaptists' accounts of their own activity. This seemingly confined dispute over Anabaptist origins and identity leads to a wider consideration of the significance of both Christian and social-scientific uses of meta-narratives or "narrative bases" in political and ethical reflection.     

Educating for Autonomy: Liberalism and Autonomy in the Capabilities Approach

Martha Nussbaum grounds her version of the capabilities approach in political liberalism. In this paper, we argue that the capabilities approach, insofar as it genuinely values the things that persons can actually do and be, must be grounded in a hybrid account of liberalism: in order to show respect for adults, its justification must be political; in order to show respect for children, however, its implementation must include a commitment to comprehensive autonomy, one that ensures that children develop the skills necessary to make meaningful choices about whether or not to exercise their basic capabilities. Importantly, in order to show respect for parents who do not necessarily recognize autonomy as a value, we argue that the liberal state, via its system of public education, should take on the role of ensuring that all children within the state develop a sufficient degree of comprehensive autonomy.     

Within the Limits of Civic Training: Education Moderates the Relationship Between Openness and Political Attitudes

Research demonstrates that the Big‐Five's Openness to Experience is inversely associated with political conservatism. This literature, however, implicitly assumes that the strength of this relationship is invariant across the electorate. We challenge this assumption by arguing that education—an institution designed to increase civic competence—affects the degree to which personality predicts various political attitudes. Specifically, we posit that education facilitates people's ability to identify issue positions that (theoretically) resonate with their personality. Using a national probability sample of New Zealand voters (n = 6,518), we show that education consistently moderates the relationship between personality and a host of political attitudes. Whereas Openness to Experience is inversely associated with politically conservative issue positions among the highly educated, it is often uncorrelated with the same attitudes among those with low levels of educational attainment. These results identify an important—though often neglected—moderator of the relationship between personality and political attitudes.