Justiça distributiva e renda básica de cidadania: uma análise da proposta de Philippe Van Parijs

Abstract

This study focuses on one of the best known propositions by Belgian philosopher and economist Philippe Van Parijs: the idea that the political community, especially in the name of freedom, but also of equality, must distribute to all its members a certain amount of money, with some frequency, without requiring consideration and proof of income. A right, or strictly individual benefit, called basic income. The objective of this study is not to talk about the economic, political and sociological aspects that are relevant to the topic. Rather, it seeks to review something previous, the main argument that Van Parijs leverages to defend his proposal: the idea of justice. To make it clearer, the goal is to review the aforementioned innovation by taking the tradition of thinking about justice and distribution as a parameter. The intention is to assess whether the idea of distributive justice is effectively able to support that broad model of distribution of property, as the philosopher claims to be possible. In the first chapter the effort is to portray the aforementioned "tradition" and prove what is meant when this expression is used, which may sound ambiguous or uncertain. The goal is to demonstrate that there are grounds to pursue the history of this topic and that, despite changes in meaning, it is possible to speak of a "minimum content" for the term distributive justice, as extracted from the original concept created by Aristotle and the modern concept set by John Rawls. It is argued that the expression distributive justice has always been related to the idea of proportionality. The second chapter presents the theory of justice as designed by the Belgian philosopher: its foundations, the principles that shape it, the position it occupies among other theories, and the system in which it would be fully applicable. Finally, the third chapter will present the form itself through which distribution is embodied in this theory: the basic income. The intention is to describe it in detail.