RT Article
T1 The Complexity of Justice - A Challenge to the 21st Century
JF Ethical theory and moral practice
VO 3
IS 3
SP 247
OP 262
A1 Heller, Agnes
LA English
PB Springer Science + Business Media B. V
YR 2000
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1785691791
AB The author discusses two questions, the relation between liberalism and democracy, and the relation between ethics, morality and law. As to the first question, she argues that neither liberalism nor democracy are merely formal. Roughly spoken, it can be said that liberalism stands for negative liberties, whereas democracy stands for positive ones. She observes a non-contingent tension between the ethos of liberalism (personal freedom) and the ethos of democracy (equality; majority rule). It is the task of morality to maintain and restore the balance between these two kinds of ethos. As to the second question, she is worried about the balance between law (legal regulation), ethics, and morality. On the one hand, abolishing legal regulations would amount to abolishing the freedom of the moderns. On the other hand, the substitution of legal regulations for ethical regulations would lead to a similar result: the end of the freedom of the moderns through the homogenisation of life. In the former case, personal support, charity, magnanimity, and caring would get lost, while in the latter there would be no escape from community pressure towards uniformity.
K1 Postmodern
K1 Modernity
K1 Liberalism
K1 Justice
K1 Ethics
K1 democratic ethos
K1 Democracy
DO 10.1023/A:1009932311649