SOURCE: “Kant the Liberal, Kant the Anarchist: Rawls and Lyotard on Kantian Justice,” in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, Winter, 1990, pp. 525-38.

In the following essay, May compares how Lyotard and the philosopher John Rawls use Kant's work in their formulations of justice.

The current crisis of Marxist thought is certain to provoke renewed investigations by political philosophers of their field. Radical philosophers will cast about for a viable alternative, while liberal philosophers will turn back to their tradition either to account for its seeming success or to deepen it. In both cases, the question of justice will become central, since it is especially this dimension of social life that appears to be vitiated under communist rule. For Marxists, justice has always devolved upon an equitable economic order; thus the demand, particularly among East Europeans, for an irreducible political sphere—a sphere seeking just social...