Burgerhartlezing 2013. The Sense of Justice. A Realistic Utopia?

[p. 4]

The Sense of Justice. A Realistic Utopia?
Céline Spector
Summary

Citizenship is a legal status, defined by civil and sometimes social rights; citizenship is, however, also a synonym for political agency: citizens are political agents, actively participating in a society's political institutions. The latter aspect is generally emphasized in republican (versus ‘liberal’) conceptions: citizens are not only considered as rights-bearing subjects, but also as co-authors of the law, implicated in public affairs. Participation in processes of deliberation and decision-making ensures that individuals are citizens, not subjects.

In this paper, I will account for a recent ‘liberal’ attempt to reassess Rousseau's republican concept of citizenship. A full theory of citizenship requires an analysis of the reasons why one should prefer, in a liberal society, to defend just institutions, even when these institutions ask for sacrifices in terms of narrow self-interest. In John Rawls' influential work (A Theory of Justice, 1971), the ‘sense of justice’ defined as the desire to defend just institutions is the basis of a ‘realistic utopia’. At the heart of Rawls' theory of citizenship, the sense of justice prevents the temptation of ‘free riding’ (taking benefits from social institutions without contributing fairly) and promotes a genuine sense of cooperation and fair play.

So what is left from the Enlightenment today? After a quick historical inquiry about the ‘revolution of citizenship’ which took place in the eighteenth century around the 1750-1760s, I will focus on two major ‘philosophes’, who contributed more than any others to this ‘revolution’ before the French Revolution. The former is usually considered as a liberal (Montesquieu); the latter is often regarded as one of the most important pre-revolutionary republican thinkers (Rousseau). In the last section of my talk, I will show how their respective depictions of the ethos of citizenship, associated with liberty and equality, is still at work in contemporary political theory.