Cycnos | Numéros | Volume 17.1 - Aspects de la philosophie américaine aujourd'hui

Résumé :

Since the publication of John Rawls’s Theory of Justice in 1971, the question of the justification of moral norms has been central to American philosophy. In today’s debates, it is often assumed — partly under the influence of Rorty’s radical theses — that the question of the validity of norms can be dealt with in the same terms as that of cognitive truth. And yet, it can be argued that if truth does require strong objectivity, on the contrary, ethical norms can only claim consensus — a consensus based on a community submitted to the conditions of primary position and of reflected balance, a notion that Rawls borrowed from N. Goodman — as the sole kind of “objectivity”; a non-religious world has to offer. The “pragmatist”; inference, which views the idea of an absolute truth as having adverse, dogmatic, and anti-liberal consequences, is here challenged by Alain Boyer. His analysis is based on an interpretation of W. Bartley, an American philosopher and an advocate of “comprehensive critical radicalism”; which uses both Popper’s falsificationalism and Quine’s revionism.

Date de publication : 2008-07-15