Returning to your red herring just for interest's sake:
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:15 pm
Now, who disagrees with you? How about Jurgen Habermas (author of "The Legitimation Crisis")?
I haven't read it. Have you? Based on a quick skim through
its Wikipedia page, it has nothing to do with "legitimating justice". The word "justice" doesn't even appear on that page. The book's title instead refers to "a decline in the confidence of administrative functions, institutions, or leadership". The strict translation of its title from the German is "Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism". It seems to have nothing to do with justice, except perhaps tangentially.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:15 pm
What about Hans Blumenberg (author of "The Legitimation of the Modern Age")?
Again, I haven't read it. Have you? Based on the summary on
its goodreads page, in it, its author "takes issue with Karl Lowith's well-known thesis that the idea of progress is a secularized version of Christian eschatology, which promises a dramatic intervention that will consummate the history of the world from outside. Instead, Blumenberg argues, the idea of progress always implies a process at work within history, operating through an internal logic that ultimately expresses human choices and is legitimized by human self-assertion, by man's responsibility for his own fate."
Again, it seems to have nothing to do with "legitimating justice", but rather with how
the internal logic of progress is legitimised via human self-assertion and responsibility.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:15 pm
And in specific, with regard to the difficulties of legitimating "justice" as a concept, what about Rawls, Dworking, Sen or Wolterstorff, each of whom wrote at least one volume trying to deal with the question you say is "a figment of your imagination"?
OK, let's investigate.
Presumably, the John Rawls volume to which you refer is
A Theory of Justice. Now, this
theorising about the concept of justice is not the same as a concern over whether or not it can be "legitimated" - it presupposes its legitimacy. So, this doesn't help your claim as to the existence of some sort of known philosophical problem with "legitimating justice".
His theory seems very interesting in any case:
Rawls develops what he claims are principles of justice through the use of an artificial device he calls the Original position; in which, everyone decides principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance. This "veil" is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves so they cannot tailor principles to their own advantage:
"[N]o one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance."
According to Rawls, ignorance of these details about oneself will lead to principles that are fair to all. If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls claims that those in the Original Position would all adopt a maximin strategy which would maximize the prospects of the least well-off.
Yep, well, fair enough. That theory's perfectly compatible with the dictionary definition of "justice". I'm not seeing anything according to which eternal, unimaginable punishment would qualify as "just" on this theory - quite the opposite, in fact, since Rawls's theory is concerned with maximising the prospects of
the least well-off, and, surely, being subject to eternal, unimaginable punishment is
pretty darn badly-off!
So far, you're batting zero from three, but let's continue to "Dworking".
Do you perhaps mean Ronald
Dworkin? You can't even spell his name correctly!
I'm not sure which of
his published works you think is concerned with the supposed "problem" of "legitimating justice". Perhaps you can fill us in. More likely, though, you'll simply ignore me here, because it's too awkward for you to respond directly and honestly.
Next up, Sen. Presumably, you mean Amartya Sen, and, presumably, the volume of his to which you refer is
The Idea of Justice, which, apparently, "is a critique and revision" of Rawls's book described above. From what I can gather, his idea in this book is that we don't even need a theory of justice, because our innate understanding of it is sufficient. This doesn't at all seem to indicate any sort of "problem" with "legitimating justice" - instead, it seems to more or less explicitly
assume the legitimacy of the concept of justice given an essential human knowing.
Another aspect of the book mentioned on that page is the idea in it that "'Public Reason'—i.e., open discussion and rational argument—can enable what Sen calls 'plural grounding', this being an 'overlapping consensus' (in Rawls's terminology) between people of different ideologies or belief or value systems such that people can agree upon comparative evaluations regarding justice without having to agree about all their values and beliefs."
This inclusive view of justice doesn't at all seem to indicate any sort of "problem" with its "legitimacy".
So, you're now batting at zero from four, with one as yet undetermined since we don't know to which volume you referred.
Finally, then, we come to (Nicholas, presumably) Wolterstorff. Again, I'm not sure which of his
selected works listed by Wikipedia, or which, perhaps, of some other
unlisted work, you think deals with the supposed "problem" of "legitimating justice", so, again, perhaps you can tell us, again pretending I didn't even suggest this and snipping it entirely if it's again too uncomfortable for you to deal with.
There we have it. So far, you've presented no evidence of some supposedly well-recognised philosophical "problem" of "legitimating justice", and the references you've provided as
supposed evidence for it don't at all anyway support the idea that eternal torment as punishment could conceivably be considered to be "just".
It appears that I was correct, and that this supposed "problem" truly is a figment of your imagination.
