O sistema familiar na teoria política: repensando o lugar da criança na Teoria da Justiça

Abstract

This study aims to question the place of the child in the political theory and in the meaning of prevailing justice in rule-based democracies, namely egalitarian liberalism, and its necessary impact and projection in the solution of constitutional legal issues involving these subjects. After studying this issue, I identified the following problem: the difficulty of recognizing the child as a subject endowed with an autonomous subjectivity, but contextualized. Children do not grow on trees; they are born, and grow up within a family. They are subjects who are twopronged governed, inside a complex ecosystem comprised of an overlapping of at least two important authorities - the family and the state. Solutions that are intended to be just for children cannot ignore that reality. On the whole, this study has started from a macro perspective, passing by the intermediary structures up to a micro perspective, as a preliminary step for building a philosophical theoretical framework able to guide the resolution of legal problems of regulatory or judicial origin involving children. Following, I applied proposed theory to concrete cases, making a comparison between the ideas presented here and those normally used to the resolution of disputes involving children. In Chapter 1.1, the study shows society as a complex system consisting of associative structures which is called human ecosystem. In Chapter 1.2, a historic timeline was proposed which is capable to breathe life to relationships initially outlined in Chapter 1.1, especially those forged between family and state. Existing connections between these two associated levels have been searched, identifying respective roles of local and central authorities. In Chapter 2.1, I initiated the analysis of the family on an internal perspective, based on the feminist criticism of the Rawlsian theory of justice. In Chapter 2.2, I enlarged the criticism forged on intrafamily level, so that it could also embrace the standpoint of children. Finally, in Chapter 3.1, after organizing a philosophical and theoretical line which is barely enough for the study of children, I started the analysis of two difficult situations involving children, their families and the state - the flag salute cases and the Wisconsin v. Yoder case. The proposal is to address criticism to concrete cases, seeking solutions that take into account the standpoint of the child, recognized in this study as playing the leading role.