Journal of Sociology and Social Work

Decomposing Rawls’s Philosophy of Justice with Foucault’s Discipline and Punish by way of a Transmutation of Hegel’s Master-Slave Dialectic in the Phenomenology of Spirit
Rajesh Sampath

Abstract
This paper deconstructs Rawls’s philosophy of justice by appropriating certain theoretical views of power and domination advanced by Foucault’s work, particularly in Discipline and Punish. It attempts to show that the enclosed world of the prison may not differ so much from external normalization processes in a free society that tend to produce a servile consciousness to unquestioned laws and policies. Hegel’s master-slave dialectic is appropriated to advance this argument. The paper concludes with certain reflections on how Marx’s theory of the alienation of labor, monastic asceticism and religious self-examination and Foucault’s theory of the moral reform of prisoners - as an insidious form of domination - compare and contrast in various ways to disclose certain limits to the pursuit of ideal justice in a free society.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jssw.v3n1a5