Paper's abstract

Martha Nussbaum, The First Founder
It is not too much of a stretch to view Williams as one of the shapers of our constitutional tradition, providing the basis for a politics based on equal respect for conscience and religious fairness that resonate to the present day. Behind its importantpolitical achievement was a body of thought as rich on these issues as that of John Locke, and considerably more perceptive concerning the psychology of both persecutor and victim. At its heart is an idea on which Williams focused with an obsessional zeal: the idea of the preciousness and the dignity of the individual human conscience. His analysis helps us seeing why persecution is so attractive and what emotional attitudes might be required to resist it. It is not fanciful to see here an adumbration of John Rawls's idea of civil society as involving a set of moral principles concerning which people from different "comprehensive doctrines" can join in an "overlapping consensus."


Key Words : Rawls, religious fairness, Locke, conscience
t. 52, 2009 : p. 299-316

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