El liberalismo y sus críticos. Debates en torno a la relación entre Derechos individuales, comunidad, estado y justicia distributiva

Abstract

This article reviews the results of a research on the conceptual itineraries of liberalism and its critics, regarding the problem of individual rights, both in its theoretical dimensión and political efects. Three cases have been approached: England in the middle of nineteenth century, Germany in 1920 decade and the United States by the end of twentieth century. Frome the perspective we chose, liberalism, more than a self-structured current of thought, works as a field of significance that, through the debates in which it is involved, sketches new subjects and  statements. In each case, a specific topic was highlighted: in the british case, the relationship between individual rights and community helped us going through the writings of John Stuart Mill, Samuel Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle; in the German-speaking case, the link between individual rights and State was the line of analysis on different positions, such as Max Weber, Hans Kelsen, or the critics supported by left thought –Frankfurt School- or right one –Carl Schmitt-; and, finally, the North-American case was explored considering the question of the relationship between individual rights and distributive justice, a crucial one in John Rawls works, as well as in neoliberalism and libertarianism.