What's a conception of the (good) life?

Basic data for this talk

Information about the event

Abstract

What are the limits of legitimate state action in a liberal state that values autonomy and ensures basic liberal rights? Can we establish principles for drawing the line between legitimate and illegitimate state action or that points out matters that the state should or should not get involved in? These are fundamental questions in contemporary Political Philosophy and even within the broadly liberal tradition we can identify two quite different camps by the way they answer this question. The anti-perfectionist camp defends a principle of restraint, saying that while the state may be justified in taking an active role in matters of justice, it has to refrain from any activity that aims at promoting conceptions of the good life or that is justified by considerations of the good. Perfectionists, on the other hand, say that no such principle of restraint should be established, even defending this thesis up to the point that "it is the goal of all political action to enable individuals to pursue valid conceptions of the good" (Raz). Since the great majority of philosophers involved in this ‘perfectionism-debate' on both sides do not discuss how the line between considerations of the good life and other issues, e.g. matters of justice, can be drawn, they seem to take for granted that the distinction is clear enough to be applicable in political theory and practice. Motivated by the fundamental role the term "conceptions of the good (life)" plays in the debate between perfectionists and anti-perfectionists, I critically discuss this line of demarcation and scrutinize if it can be spelled out clearly enough to identify two different camps in political philosophy and play a role as a guiding principle in political practice.

Speakers from the University of Münster

Düber, Dominik

Centre for Advanced Study in Bioethics (Kolleg-Forschergruppe 1209) (KFG1209)