Princípios de justiça e legitimação do Estado contemporâneo

Abstract

The efficiency aimed for in the contemporary State can only be achieved if it is referred to a pattern which determines its essential attributes. This article presents the controversies around these attributes by confronting the arguments which seek to identify in the Welfare State the pertinent references for a just society. The author intends to clarify the “language of rights ” by confronting, on one hand, a principle of justice which is based on liberal individualism and, on the other, a principle of justice which steems from the French sociological tradition, which allows the formulation of the idea of rights inherent to society itself. The author’s point: it will not be possible to formulate, in a coherent way, the attributions of the modern State unless we can count on a theory which does not oscilate, in a more or less random manner, between the two traditions above mentioned.