- Over time as secularism struck roots,
ideas about political and social entities developed, and
the movement that placed man at the center grew stronger,
the attraction of this external secular force faded for
some philosophers, the desire to imitate the objectivity
of divinely based morality ebbed, and theories that did
not strive so much for 'objectivity' arose. Man himself,
the subject, without the mantle of objectivity that would
jar him out of his innate subjectivity (eg. through the
practical pure reason that Kant spoke of) became a source
of legitimization. It began with the social-utility theory
that searched for the magic formula in the form of the greatest
good of humanity. One of its proponents, Bentham, constructed
formulas by which the general social good could be calculated
if the society was viewed as a single man. This theory of
utilitarianism metamorphosed into a theory of individual
utility, which was particularly popular in the 1970's in
the philosophy of Rawles as well as Kimlika and Dworkin.
This philosophy valued the individual and his rights and
interests over the goals and interests of the general society.
It favored the static rights of the individual over general
society's dynamic needs. This approach, which had budded
far before the twentieth century, anchored individual civil
rights into the constitutions of many countries, in an effort
to check the pragmatic legislation by elected officials
that accorded with the general variable interest. The clash
between the individual's constant rights and the pragmatic
fluctuating interests of the general public as represented
by the public's constantly changing elected officials was
the driving force behind a constitution, a rigid permanent
set of laws that took legal precedence over legislated law.
Advocates of this constitutional system believed that a
particular generation could define basic desires and rights
according to conceptions of their time, and impose them
on later generations, regardless of how needs and ideas
changed, leaving only an escape hatchet of a complex amendment
process.
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