The roots of Rawls' comprehension of the good as the ethical value

Abstract

The subject of this article is to recognize European and particularly Mediterranean roots of understanding of a moral goodness as the fundamental ethical value in John Rawls’ constructivism. Since his social constructivism starts with the determination of general axiological settings of goodness, ethical understanding of the same is one of the fundamental attitudes of his social philosophy. This investigation is mainly leaned on his "A Theory of Justice" and it is shown that its roots lead to Aristotle’s and Kant’s understandings of general and fundamental ethical attitudes. Some logical-ontological comparisons are shown with the respect of Aristotle’s teleological and Kant’s phenomenological attitudes. These comparisons show that in some respects Rawls follows Aristotle’s teleological definition of goodness as teleological aim and this is the reason why he founded it among the fundamental principles of his construction of the rightful society. It is also shown that Rawls actually follows Kant’s categorical and hypothetical imperative, with a not very persuasive criticism of Kant’s attitudes from the standpoints of phaenomena and nuomena. Conclusively, the attention is drawn on European Continental philosophical roots of this analytical social philosophy.