Towards a critique of Justice, Rawlsian Liberal Political Theory, and Nation-State Relations (TBC)

"According to Nussbaum, the attempt to secure social cooperation on the basis of mutual advantage for the contracting parties is at the heart of liberal political theory.... Liberalism teaches us to provide an account of justice that does not depend on the presumption of altruism, but rather assumes an admittedly fictive bargaining process that establishes fundamental principles of mutual advantage. The presumption is that people will do the right things if they can see that it really is in their best interest." (85)

Hauerwas's critique of liberal political theory hinges on his theological anthropology. LPT assumes a society composed of autonomous rational actors, independent of and prior to any determinative tradition, seeking after their own self-interest, as necessary for an account of justice distributed to the members of said society. (...)

Despite such strong critiques of LPT on a person/society scale, LPT is still the dominant mode of thought on a nation-state/international relations scale. Nation-states are rational actors, establishing contracts based on mutual self-interest, violating said contracts when they no longer serve such interest, and exist ideally as autonomous from any historical tradition or contingency. Justice among the nations is at best a matter of consensus, and at worst a matter of political manipulation. Analogously, what is required to critique the dominant view of international relations is a "theological anthropology" of the state. States are not ahistorical, atraditional independent rational actors. Just as language and rationality is a gift which indebits you to your community, statehood is a gift which indebits the state to history. (...)

"History is merely the gift of God's temporary suspension of judgment" (Barth, somewhere)

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