Vol. 30 No. 1 (2010)
Articles

El refugio de la claridad

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  • Josep E. Corbi
Josep E. Corbi
Universidad de Valencia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36446/af.2010.136

Published 2010-05-01

Keywords

  • Rawls,
  • Original position,
  • Thought experiment,
  • Deliberation,
  • Philosophical style
  • Rawls,
  • Posición original,
  • Experimento mental,
  • Deliberación,
  • Canon filosófico
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Abstract

A stress on clarity and argumentation may serve as a refuge against quackery, but often those who focus on such methodological principles tend to identify clarity with literalness and argumentation with formalization. My reflection upon the limits of a philosophical style inspired in such an identification is mainly concerned with the use of thought experiments in the elucidation of our moral practices and, more specifically, with the relevance of John Rawls' original position for the determination of the basic principles of justice. To this purpose, I emphasize that the relevance of the original position rests on a matching assumption according to which, if agents deliberate appropriately, there should not be any gap between our judgments concerning justice about a hypothetical situation and our judgments whenever we are actually confronted with it. I will, nevertheless, explore a particular moral experience, namely, that of the soldier, only to conclude that such an assumption is untenable. More specifically, I will defend the deliberative virtues of an expressive awareness of certain facts as opposed to a mere declarative awareness of them. In the last section, I will derive some implications of this distinction as to the articulation of a philosophical style.

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