Nielsen and Hartz on The Problem of Motivation in Hegel and Rawls

Carsten Fogh Nielsen, University of Aarhus, Department of Education, and Emily Hartz, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Organization, have published Why Be Just? The Problem of Motivation in Hegel and Rawls at 31 Ratio Juris 326 (2018). Here is the abstract.

At the heart of any theoretical problem of justice lies the problem of motivation: Even if we could conceive of a way to develop a comprehensive system of just laws, and even if we could rationally believe in the justice of these laws, how could we ever ensure that we—or anyone else—would be motivated to abide by them? By unearthing how the problem of motivation sways canonical discussions of justice, the article brings forth intrinsic similarities and differences in these discussions that are often overlooked in the literature. In particular, the article highlights intrinsic similarities in the analysis of the concept of justice in two central works that belong to the continental and the analytic tradition respectively and are otherwise rarely discussed together: Hegel’s Outlines of the Philosophy of Right and Rawls’s Theory of Justice.

The full text is not available from SSRN.