“At the end of the last book he published, The Law of Peoples, Rawls sets out the task of “reconciling” members of “liberal democratic” societies to their social order, and interprets his own previous work as contributing to that enterprise. Hegel tried to “reconcile” Prussians in the early 1820s with the Prussian state by showing that, although that state needed some far-reaching reforms, it was nevertheless fundamentally “rational” and conformed to all the intuitive demands for moral acceptability that its members might impose on it.” Similarly, Rawls’s work was an attempt to reconcile Americans to an idealised version of their own social order at the end of the twentieth century.”

— Raymond Geuss, book Philosophy and Real Politics

Source: Philosophy and Real Politics (2008), p. 89.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "At the end of the last book he published, The Law of Peoples, Rawls sets out the task of “reconciling” members of “libe…" by Raymond Geuss?

Raymond Geuss38

British philosopher 1946

Related quotes

“It is no easy task for a state any more than for a man to become reconciled to insignificance”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 3, pg. 21, translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 3
Context: It is no easy task for a state any more than for a man to become reconciled to insignificance; it is the duty and right of the ruler either to renounce his authority, or by the display of an imposing material superiority to compel the ruled to resignation.

“Welcoming Hegel’s idea of reconciliation as akin to his own enterprise of public reason, Rawls drew the line at his vision of the international realm as a domain of violence and anarchy, in which contention between sovereign states was bound to be regulated by war. Habermas’s gesture enlisted Hegel, on the contrary, as a patron of cosmopolitan peace. The first could not square his Law of Peoples with the lawlessness of Hegel’s states, the second could only enrol Hegel for pacific progress by turning him philosophically inside out. Bobbio, by contrast, could take the measure of Hegel’s conception of world history, as a ruthless march of great powers in which successive might founds overarching right, and invoke it in all logic to justify his approval of American imperial violence. Law was born of force, and the maxim of the conqueror – prior in tempore, potior in jure”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

still held.
Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch. 7. "Arms and Rights, The Adjustable Centre" (1998)

“Socialism means power, power, and more power. Thoughts and schemes are nothing without power. The path to power has already been mapped: the valuable elements of German labor in union with the best representatives of the Old Prussian state idea, both groups determined to build a strictly socialist state to democratize our nation in the Prussian manner; both forged into a unit by the same sense of duty, by the awareness of a great obligation, by the will to obey in order to rule, to die in order to win, by the strength to make immense sacrifices in order to accomplish what we were born for, what we are, what could not be without us.”

Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) German historian and philosopher

Prussianism and Socialism (1919)

“If each member of society can be induced or impelled to do his allotted task by associating it with some motive that appears to him adequate, then he need never know how he is contributing to the real end, and need not even be aware of the end at all. It is this problem of organization that we shall call the Economic Problem. It is in fact the real subject matter of political economy.”

Ralph George Hawtrey (1879–1975) British economist

Source: The Economic Problem (1925), Chapter I, "The Problem Profounded", p. 3.

“The enlargement of Prussian power is little by little becoming a demand of justice.”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Statement (1869), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 39.

“Some recent scholars have proposed that Jesus … preached a "radically egalitarian society"—that is, that he set about to reform society by inventing a new set of rules to govern social relations … There is little to suggest that Jesus was concerned with pushing social "reform" in any fundamental way in this evil age. In his view, present-day society and all its conventions were soon to come to a screeching halt, when the Son of Man arrived from heaven in judgment on the earth. Far from transforming society from within, Jesus was preparing people for the destruction of society. Only when God's Kingdom arrived would an entirely new order appear, in which peace, equality, and justice would reign supreme.”

Bart D. Ehrman book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

Source: Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (1999), Ch. 11: 'Not in Word Only', p. 190

“Therefore we demand as a fundamental law of the state: …”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

The obligation for interest is replaced by the obligation to repay the principal; thus after 20 or 25 years, depending on the interest-rate, the lent capital is repaid and the debt retired. ...
Through intensive enlightenment of the people, it is to be made clear to the people that money is and should be nothing other than a voucher for completed labor; that while every highly developed economy of course has need of money as a medium of exchange, the function of money also ends with that, and in no case should money be lent a supramundane power to grow of itself by means of interest, at the expense of productive labor.
"Manifesto for the Abolition of Enslavement to Interest on Money" (1919)

“With a democratic society, the concept of multiculturalism is difficult to reconcile. Maybe in a very long term. But if you ask, where multicultural societies have so far worked, you can get very quickly to the conclusion that they only work there peacefully where there is a strong authoritarian state there. So, it was a mistake that we picked up at the beginning of the 60's guest workers from foreign cultures into the country.”

Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015) Chancellor of West Germany 1974-1982

Hamburger Abendblatt http://www.abendblatt.de/politik/deutschland/article290699/Wieviel-Anatolien-vertraegt-Europa.html, 24. November 2004

“The ultimate goal of laws is to educate the society to abide by the law and law by itself can only address the symptoms, but education can reach deep into our heart, which is far more effective to set the society on the right course. So, education is the fundamental solution. Although I am an educator, I am marching toward the same goal as a lawyer and there is no need to feel disappointed.”

Hung Hsiu-chu (1948) Taiwanese politician

Attributed in: " Vice President http://www.ly.gov.tw/en/02_chief/chiefBiography.action?id=2" in The Legislative Yuan of Republic of China.

“Democratic socialism turns out to be an inherently unstable compound, a contradiction in terms. Every social-democratic party, once in power, soon finds itself choosing, at one point after another, between the socialist society it aspires to and the liberal society that lathered [sic] it… [S]ocialist movements end up [in] a society where liberty is the property of the state, and is (or is not) doled out to its citizens along with other contingent "benefits."”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

As quoted in "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy: A Symposium" https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/capitalism-socialism-and-democracy/ (1 April 1978), edited by William Barrett, Commentary <br class="br">1970s

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Raymond Geuss38

Related quotes

Related topics