The axiological and ideological foundations of liberal doctrines to economical issues

Classical political liberalism was not related with some economic concepts, although John Locke accept right to property as the fundamental law of nature. Later liberalism began involve to economic and social issues. Utilitarian liberalism of J. Bentham and John Stuart Mill created the foundations to social justice. Evolutionary liberalism of H. Spencer affirm human egoism and rivalry as the fundamental social principles, also he was proponent minimum and limited state in political economic. And social liberalism, introducing new concept of positive freedom, was for interventionism and social policy. In XX a. J. Rawls and egalitarian liberalism also was for such economical and social concepts. For this liberalism the primate values are justice as fairness and equality. Liberal doctrines was differently to economical concepts, because they have specific and various ideas and values.

In this paper, I employ the method of reflective equilibrium to analyse background conditions of our considered judgements about distributive justice generated by a thought experiment called “Three Children and a Flute”, proposed and interestingly commented upon by Amartya Sen in his book The Idea of Justice. I claim that, contrary to Sen’s conclusions drawn from the thought experiment, for the utilitarian and egalitarian visions of distributive justice to hold other things about distribution of resources and social life that we are not willing to accept must be true and that it is not the case then that it is a ‘difficult decision’ to make what pattern of distribution should prevail in the thought experiment. To boot, I hold that libertarian or natural pattern of distribution does not presuppose these background conditions that we are not willing to accept and which are presupposed by egalitarian and utilitarian distributive patterns. I conclude that taking into consideration the fact that there is a plethora of inconsistencies, counter-intuitive consequences and anti-scientific implications of the utilitarian and egalitarian solutions to the thought experiment, it is a natural pattern of distribution that prevails in the ‘flute dilemma’.