Τρίτη 20 Σεπτεμβρίου 1994





CRITICAL REMARKS ON RAWLS THEORY OF THE  PERSON


IMMO OMNES NIHIL ALIUD QUAM VOLUNTARES SUNT
 (Saint Augustine)

KONSTANTINOS GEORMAS, 1994



 In this paper I will try to outline the theory of the person underlying Rawls theory of justice. Following Sandel, I will try to show that a) the plurality of the persons is saved only on the expense of the annihilation of the person. Thus, in a peculiar way the deontological justice ends up with a rather totalitarian perspective of the person. b) Secondly, I would like to show that his theory implies a completely western approach of the person based on the person’s power capacity and not in his shareness. c) And thirdly I want to discuss the notion of freedom and autonomy in the same context.

JUSTICE OF THE ANCIENTS

In the next chapter I will follow Papaioannou’s analysis of the ancient Greek perception of justice, in order to show the similarities and at the same time the huge distance that distinguishes this with Rawls account.
We can say that the ancient Greeks had a kind of “original position”. Justice was positioned in the center of cosmos as the power which managed it and toward which everything had to be submitted, with the same way that the polis had to subordinate itself under the law. It is justice which as guard of the eternal laws put limits even to the sun itself. Its work is divine. It is only within its limits that every act, nature, every existence finds its Logos, its logic, the meaning of its existence. Beyond its limits disaster is lurking. The knowledge of these limits was a painful and tantalizing process. It is through this tantalizing process, though, that human beings could reach wisdom. It is the knowledge of the limits that make persons free, for in this way they can harmonize with the eternal laws of cosmos.

Τετάρτη 25 Μαΐου 1994

Foucault  on Sex and Power,




25.4.1994

What really struck me when I read Foucault’s writings, especially “History of Sexuality”, was the same nature of the notion of sex that has developed in the West and the notion of power that Foucault so masterly has arrayed in front of me. Both notions are ubiquitous. They both have to deal with the body. What I want to explore in this paper is the idea that in fact his new power that has been emerged since the middle nineteenth century was nothing else but a distortion, better a perversion, of the sex. Namely, I am going to keep Foucault’s path of argumentation by keeping on the other hand Reich’s conception of sex. It is clear to me that only by keeping the binary “nature” of sex we can remain within Foucault’s framework and explain better the connection of sex and power.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE MODERN POWER
That, from 18nth century on, power acquires new characteristics is not a new remark. Tocqueville, 150 years before remarked: “The authority of a king is physical and controls the actions of the men without subduing their will. But th majority possesses a power that is physical and moral at the same time, which acts upon the will as much upon the actions… Under the absolute sway of one man the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul… Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in