Existential risk and equal political liberty

Joseph J. PORTER, Adam GIBBONS*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

Abstract

Rawls famously argues that the parties in the original position would agree upon the two principles of justice. Among other things, these principles guarantee equal political liberty—that is, democracy—as a requirement of justice. We argue on the contrary that the parties have reason to reject this requirement. As we show, by Rawls’ own lights, the parties would be greatly concerned to mitigate existential risk. But it is doubtful whether democracy always minimizes such risk. Indeed, no one currently knows which political systems would. Consequently, the parties—and we ourselves—have reason to reject democracy as a requirement of justice in favor of political experimentalism, a general approach to political justice which rules in at least some non-democratic political systems which might minimize existential risk.
Original languageEnglish
Article number46
JournalAsian Journal of Philosophy
Volume3
Issue number2
Early online date31 Jul 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

The authors thank Luc Bovens, Tom Dougherty, Brian Kogelmann, Douglas MacLean, Alexander Motchoulski, Alexandra Oprea, Gerald Postema, Eric Sampson, Alexander Schaefer, Delaney Thull, Kevin Vallier, Alfredo Watkins, several anonymous reviewers, and audiences at the Rust Belt PPE Workshop, After Justice: John Rawls’ Legacy in the 21st Century, and the International Symposium on Rawls for their comments on previous versions and presentations of this paper.

Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024.

Funding

Joseph Porter gratefully acknowledges funding from the Institute for Humane Studies which supported research for this paper. Open Access Publishing Support Fund provided by Lingnan University.

Keywords

  • Democracy
  • Existential risk
  • Long-termism
  • Political experimentalism
  • Rawls

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