Does anyone here understand political philosophy?

"Modern-day communitarianism began in the upper reaches of Anglo-American academia in the form of a critical reaction to John Rawls' landmark 1971 book A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971). Drawing primarily upon the insights of Aristotle and Hegel, political philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer disputed Rawls' assumption that the principal task of government is to secure and distribute fairly the liberties and economic resources individuals need to lead freely chosen lives. These critics of liberal theory never did identify themselves with the communitarian movement (the communitarian label was pinned on them by others, usually critics),[1] much less offer a grand communitarian theory as a systematic alternative to liberalism. Nonetheless, certain core arguments meant to contrast with liberalism's devaluation of community recur in the works of the four theorists named above (Avineri & de-Shalit 1992, Bell 1993, Berten et al. 1997, Mulhall & Swift 1996, and Rasmussen 1990) ,and for purposes of clarity one can distinguish between claims of three sorts: methodological claims about the importance of tradition and social context for moral and political reasoning, ontological or metaphysical claims about the social nature of the self, and normative claims about the value of community.[2]

This essay is therefore divided in three parts, and for each part I present the main communitarian claims, followed by an argument (in each part) that philosophical concerns in the 1980s have largely given way to the political concerns that motivated much of the communitarian critique in the first place."

I loved the show, Sandel and Rawls. They should bring back more of those old political debates. Love his stand-up on the salary of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor ($200,000) with the salary of television’s Judge Judy ($25 million) when Sandel asks, is this fair?

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I never read this work but surely there can be no ends at all if self is not already there

Sandel uses the (usually-Deific) capital "S" re "selfness" to indicate a higher (or prior) order of processing, in which the present "conscious self" is formed of the "Self" (or prior and/or less "self-conscious" processes). Others term this "higher order" (for Kant, lower order) processing or "Self"ness as "preconscious." Rawls' notion of the "veil of ignorance" encourages the notion that interchangeability of roles/situations (Marx' supposition re labor roles, which has been proven false)--or the suppositional lack of particular roles/situations (suspension of judgment)--provides a more "enlightened self interest" perspective re Rawls' value of self-realization. One critique of this was Sandel's, in which he argues that preconditions shape individuals' judgment, even re a Rawlsian supposedly situation- or context-free (juror-like) position (in which all agree that self-realization is the good). A perhaps less cogent critique was directed by Nozick against Rawls' emphasis on "self-realization" as the motive for adopting the "veil of ignorance" (essentially, in Rawls, all people are able to appreciate Maslowian "self-actualization," "being-cognition," as the noble good, for all). That Rawlsian notion of motivation as enlightened self-interest is somewhat denied by Sandel, who claimed prior conditioning would override Maslowian truth/motivation, and even more by Nozick, who claimed that choices in a deficit-oriented populace would lead some more quickly to self-realization; thus Nozick opined (as did Sandel) that "real life" would not permit the Rawlsian motivation-condition to obtain. In essence, Sandel's and Nozick's major objection to Rawls: real-life and real-world conditions (Sandel's being prior "Self"ness, Nozick's being choice-making on a Bell curve re individuals' progress towards self-realization/self-actualization) are sufficiently strong to not easily permit a successful society structured as Rawls proposed.