El republicanismo y la crisis del rawlsismo metodológico (Nota sobre método y sustancia normativa en el debate republicano)

Abstract

Five generations of utilitarians, basing themselves on social science that followed the neoclassical marginalist revolution, destroyed the classical connection between normative philosophical reflection and the world of rights and social institutions. The style of engaging in political philosophy inaugurated by Rawls not only promised to break with all this but apparently aimed at a conscious resumption of the classical -pre-utilitarian, pre-neoclassical- way of going about political philosophy: rights, virtues, contracts, social classes and institutional frameworks -and not just utilities maximised by individuals atomistically and non-institutionally conceived- retumed to the core of a political philosophy that was expressis verbis presented as «neo-contractualist». It is argued in this artiele that sorne of the methodological options associated with Rawls' legacy («methodological rawlsianism») reveal why the promise was, if atall, only partially kept. Taking the recent crisis of «methodological rawlsianism» as their starting point, the authors, republicans avant la mode, attempt to understand/explain the recent spectacular rise of (for and against) interest in old republican traditions.