Search

This article aims to explore and lay out crucial aspects of the interpretation of the Hegelian philosophy offered by the American thinker Richard Dien Winfield. Winfield works out an innovative line of interpretation that decisively ties Hegel to a non-foundational type of philosophical epistemology with significant consequences concerning the concept of objectivity in both theoretical and practical philosophical investigation. The article attempts to reconstruct this line of interpretation and assess its argumentative force, in view of an array of epistemological problems regarding theory construction in political philosophy. On this account, the principal question is whether the special brand of epistemological non-foundationalism ascribed by Winfield to Hegel is actually in a favorable position to successfully tackle with these problems.

The aim of this paper is to offer a concise and faithful account of Rawls’ theory of international justice, in an effort, first, to elucidate the structure of the argument that is advanced in that theory and, second, to present a critical assessment of it. The critical assessment section attempts, on the one side, to cope with crucial methodological issues, which have a more general bearing upon Rawls’ overall political philosophical position, including the constructivist perspective of theory making and the division between a political conception and a comprehensive doctrine; on the other side, to weigh up a set of substantive claims made in the Rawlsian theory of international justice, including the recognition of peoples as the fundamental subjects of international law, the toleration of the so-called decent peoples and the considerably thin construal of human rights encompassed in The Law of Peoples. The paper attempts to provide a series of reasons that could be well-suited to explicate its author’s doubts about the soundness of the Rawlsian theoretical perspective with regard to both its formal methodological features and its more content-oriented convictions.