Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Date
2020
Date of Award
2020
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Philosophy
Committee Chair
Thomas Nenon
Committee Member
Mary Beth Mader
Committee Member
Susan Nordstrom
Committee Member
Michael Monahan
Abstract
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls tells us that an important element of any political theory of justice is its capacity to generate its own support. That is to say that the principles of justice theorized by political philosophers, when adopted by a society, ought to inspire individuals to act in accordance with them. A theory of justice whose principles does not generate its own support would be, in this sense, unstable and as a result, rejected by rational liberal standards. In this dissertation, I criticize the stability of Rawlsian liberal theory by first showing its reliance on the deficiency conception of childhood, and second, rejecting this view of childhood as empirically ungrounded and epistemologically narrow in scope. By the end, this dissertation concludes that liberal philosophy is either unstable and therefore illegitimate by its own standards, or needs to rethink the political status of childrena task which seems impossible given liberalisms own commitment to mature rationality.
Library Comment
Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest
Recommended Citation
Wurtz, Jonathan, "Childhood as a Philosophical Means to a Political End: Liberalism, Stability, and the Deficiency Model of Childhood" (2020). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2846.
https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/etd/2846
Comments
Data is provided by the student.