Peter Koller

Der Beitrag behandelt die Konzepte von Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit im Kontext des gesellschaftspolitischen Diskurses der Moderne, in dem die Gestaltung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften insgesamt, ihrer staatlichen Ordnung wie auch ihrer ökonomischen Verfassung, zur Debatte steht. Um die sehr komplexe Struktur der Ideen von Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit zu erhellen, wird zunächst das Vokabular von Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit untersucht, um seine vielfältigen Verwendungsweisen und die damit verbundenen normativen Forderungen herauszuarbeiten. Davon ausgehend wird dann die moderne Vorstellung sozialer Gerechtigkeit und Gleichheit in den Blick genommen und ihre grundlegenden Postulate an die politische und ökonomische Ordnung moderner Staaten skizziert.

Die Rede von Solidarität in ihrem gegenwärtigen Verständnis kommt, in Anlehnung an einen Gemeinschuldverhältnisse bezeichnenden Terminus des Juristenlatein, erst im ausgehenden 18. Jahrhundert auf, offenbar zuerst in Frankreich, um dann im 19. Jahrhundert in entwickelten Gesellschaften wachsende Verbreitung zu finden. Dazu trägt vor allem die Bewegung der Arbeiterschaft bei, die sich den Aufruf zur Solidarität auf ihre Fahnen schreibt. Auch wenn dieser Aufruf anfänglich hauptsächlich darauf zielt, die benachteiligten sozialen Klassen zum organisierten Zusammenwirken zur Durchsetzung ihrer Interessen zu mobilisieren, nimmt die Rede von Solidarität nach und nach auch den Sinn einer universellen, sich auf alle Mitglieder einer Gesellschaft, ja unter Umständen auf alle Menschen erstreckenden Forderung des sozialen und politischen Handelns an.

The relationship between human rights and civil rights is twofold: on the one hand these rights can be viewed as forming a unity, and on the other there is a significant difference between them. The unity of human and civil rights is based upon the widely shared view that both are fundamental and universal rights, inherent to all human beings without regard to any contingent factors. This unity, however, is weakened by the division of our world into a plurality of separate and independent states. It thus becomes plausible to assume that the citizens of a particular state are endowed with certain fundamental rights towards each other and their state, which are stronger than the rights existing between human beings in general. In this respect, human and civil rights are significantly different.However positive law may draw the line between human and civil rights, any such delimitation needs moral justification and is questionable from an ethical point of view. Moreover, there is reason to doubt that traditional approaches are still suitable in a world in which different societies are merging in their economic, political and ecological affairs. This article considers the ethical foundation for human and civil rights in an attempt to determine whether the traditional delimitation between them is in need of revision. An argument is made that human and civil rights differ in their moral justification. While human rights can be justified by the basic principle of a universal morality, namely the principle of universalization, civil rights are based on our conception of social justice. The justification for civil rights, however, proceeds from the assumption that any given society is a self-sufficient and independent community. Since this assumption no longer corresponds to the conditions of our modern world, the article concludes that a new understanding of basic rights is imperative

Since antiquity, prudence has been esteemed as an important guideline of reasonable human conduct and even as a cardinal virtue. There are, however, controversies about what it means and demands. In ancient and medieval philosophy, prudence was understood in a very wide sense as the comprehensive capacity to act in a well-considered way on the basis of best reasons, including moral reasons. By contrast, in modern philosophy it has often been interpreted in a much narrower sense as individuals' pursuit of their own long-term good or rational self-interest, which does not necessarily rely on moral reasons and may lead to results contradictory to morality. On the assumption of this second, narrow concept, this paper aims at clarifying the role of prudence in the realm of practical reason and its relationship to morality. Any human action faces three questions regarding its reasonableness: We can ask whether or not it is expedient, i.e. suitable for achieving the pursued goals, whatever these goals may be, prudent, i.e. compatible with the actor's well-considered self-interest, and moral, i.e. acceptable from the viewpoint of moral impartiality and universality. Accordingly, one can differentiate between three levels of practical reason that include different guidelines for human conduct, but must be combined in order to come to a final judgement: expediency, prudence, and morality. These levels of practical reason differ, on the one hand, in the way they make use of individual preferences and, on the other, in the initial state of affairs to which they refer. Since the considerations at the different levels may result in contradicting directions, there must be a rule for combining them in a coherent end-result: this rule consists in a strict ranking order according to which morality overrules prudence that itself has priority over expediency. This conception of practical reason raises a number of questions as to the relationships between prudence and morality. The most frequently asked question in this context, namely the question of why one should be moral, is not discussed in the paper. Instead, it focuses on the internal connections between morality and prudence. One connection concerns the impact of morality on prudence. Morality may enter into prudential considerations in two ways: through internalized moral traits that may become part of a person's self-interest and through moral preferences that may restrict conflicting prudential motives to a certain degree. But there is also a connection between prudence and morality. On the assumption that a reasonable morality must aim at achieving a social order which is to the benefit of all people concerned from an impartial point of view , it is obvious that moral reasoning cannot do without prudential considerations