In:
Social Science Information, SAGE Publications, Vol. 42, No. 3 ( 2003-09), p. 375-402
Abstract:
Besides its clearly normative value, the idea of sustainability reflects a number of needs and absences: the unsustainable character of present patterns of development, the question of explicit representation of beings such as coming generations, absent from the scenes where the future is being committed, confession of the legitimacy trouble touching environmental policies facing development stakes, and, as a more intimate disillusion, the discovery that the sustainability idea cannot stand for an alternative legitimacy principle. After having shown how sustainability passed several of the requirements characteristic of a principle of legitimacy, the article identifies the sources of its weakness as lying in its difficulties with the axioms of “common humanity”, and more particularly with “equal power of access to social states” which are inherent in the “fair city” model. But, taken separately, each existing legitimacy principle does not offer any better solution, because it runs into the problem of promises regarding the future. Sustainable development must therefore be sought in “compromise”, i.e. that type of legitimacy in which societies do not succeed in completely explicating the basis of their agreement, while nevertheless being guided by the pursuit of a common good.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
0539-0184
,
1461-7412
DOI:
10.1177/05390184030423004
Language:
English
Publisher:
SAGE Publications
Publication Date:
2003
detail.hit.zdb_id:
4834-3
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2019602-7
SSG:
3,4
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