| Budget Amount *help |
¥1,400,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,400,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
|
|---|
| Research Abstract |
Heated debates are going on today on the issue of appropriate relations between the two elements of moral and political life : the autonomy of individuals and the belonging to communities. This topic itself is not new ; it has been discussed throughout modern times by many political theorists. However, each of these arguments was constructed in its particular intellectual and practical contexts and has unique characteristics. In fact, significant dissimilarities are found among these arguments. Today's arguments have their own specific characteristics. With this in mind, I identified and classify various needs and values which are expressed in current debates. Then, I search for a viewpoint for evaluating these values in the political vision of liberal democracy. I started examining John Rawls' liberal theory and showed its use and limit for this purpose. It works where what is at stake is interpretation of fairness among people of different cultural identities. It does not help, however, when we discuss the topics such as the use of face-to-face associations for security, health, local economy and healthy democracy', which is now intensively discussed in public debates. To overcome this difculty, I argued, it is necessary to broaden the scope of discussion and try to make our evaluation more comprehensive bringing in insights of the work of sociology, empirical political analysis, political economy and political history.
|
