JUSTICE FROM NOWHERE: ETHICO-POLITICAL OBJECTIVITY IN THOMAS NAGEL AND JOHN RAWLS

The question regarding the relationship between ethics and politics has always occupied the minds of philosophers and political theorists. Thomas Nagel is one philosopher among others who clearly draws a close link between the ethical and the political. Accordingly, Nagel’s inquiry on the issues of objectivity and subjectivity is providing the readers not only with ethical but also political insights regarding the matter. On the other hand, John Rawls’s ideas of an “original position” and a “veil of ignorance” in their relation to his understanding of political justice, similarly, interrogate the possibility of an alternative perspective for an objective standpoint that recognizes and encompasses individuality while offering a model for a political community which is founded upon impartial principles. Although Rawls’s discussion is mainly contractual and strictly political, certain aspects of his works on political justice and liberalism might be reconsidered in an investigation which also engages with issues in morality and ethics. Therefore, the present study will attempt at reading Nagel’s discussion of objectivity and impartiality from an ethico-political standpoint which juxtaposes ‘the view from nowhere’ with Rawlsian “veil of ignorance”. For this, relevant arguments of both philosophers will be explored in a comparative manner while highlighting potential parallelisms between the two.