This paper examines a style of political justification prominent in contemporary liberalism, according to which policies are legitimate only if they can be shown to be acceptable to all. Although this approach is often associated with neutrality about the good life, it is argued that liberalism cannot be neutral about questions of the role of various goods, such as work, play and community. The paper closes by exploring the implications and applicability of this account of justification to contemporary political practice.

In his book A Theory of Justice, John Rawls introduces and employs the concept of “reflective equilibrium” as a method of testing which of rival moral theories is to be preferred. The introduction of this concept is plainly a significant event for moral philosophy. The criterion by which we decide to reject, say, utilitarianism in favour of a contractual theory of justice is, if anything, even more fundamental than the choice of theory itself, since our choice of moral theory may (...) well be determined by the criterion we use. (shrink)

The method of appealing to considered judgments in Wide Reflective Equilibrium has been thought to have unwelcome relativistic or ethnocentric implications. This belief, which is widely held, is, I shall argue, mistaken. Wide Reflective equilibrium has no such untoward implications. I shall first specify what I am talking about in speaking of relativism, then generally characterize WRE, then deploy some central arguments for it and finally try to show that it has no relativistic implications.

This paper argues that social and political philosophy should evaluate how groups justify, the reasons they accept. This conception arises out of a critical examination of Rawls’s notion of the basic structure of society.

This paper argues that social and political philosophy should evaluate how groups justify, the reasons they accept. This conception arises out of a critical examination of Rawls’s notion of the basic structure of society.

In this paper, The author discusses rawls's recent argument that the aim of political philosophy is not the pursuit of truth but of "free agreement, Reconciliation through public reason" designed to forge an "overlapping consensus." although the author is prepared to agree that political philosophy should sometimes have this goal, She maintains that there are metaphysical commitments about the nature of human beings underlying philosophy itself which commit the political philosophers to pursuing conditions of freedom and equal respect for all, (...) A pursuit which may fail to create--Even undermine--An overlapping consensus in a community. (shrink)

By far the most common form of argument in ethics nowadays is what can be called piecemeal appeal to intuition. Any reader of philosophy will know the kind of thing I mean. ‘On your principle, it would be all right to do such-and-such. But that's counter-intuitive. So your principle is wrong.’ The word ‘intuition’ here is not used, as it was in earlier times, to refer to a special way of knowing; instead it is used to mean merely a moral (...) sentiment or belief that persons have independently of the moral theory or philosophy or stance that they might adopt. (shrink)

Rawlsian liberalism is best understood and defended on the basis of a concrete but widely shared ideal of the person as a rational agent capable of normative self?determination in the proper political and economic conditions. In Rawls? recent works, this neo?Kantian ideal of free moral personality is no longer understood as a requirement of rational or moral agency as such, but is a concrete historical ideal or meta?value presupposed by the living tradition of liberal?democratic judgment and practice, which reason can (...) recover through a critical reflection upon this tradition. Read in this way, Rawls? theory of social justice articulates a quite powerful, rational, concrete, historical, and social dimension of modern political identity, which the critics of liberalism cannot plausibly deny. But there are other rival, powerful bourgeois?individualist and patriarchal ideals of personhood, equally rooted in modern political judgments and practices, which Rawlsian liberalism ignores, and which taken together generate the social tensions, instabilities, and conflicts of social justice characteristic of modern liberal?democratic society. Rawlsian theory and liberal political thought requires but essentially lacks a conception of moral reason adequate to comprehend and mediate these normative incoherences built into modern Western political identity. A larger more adequate paradigm of moral reason and political theory is required to overcome these deficiencies. (shrink)

It has frequently been suggested that Rawls’s characteristic method of justification, a method crucially involving the notion of reflective equilibrium, is in some sense relativistic in its implications. No sustained development of this suggestion has been undertaken by those who advance it; likewise, no sustained attempt to refute this suggestion has been made by those who are otherwise sympathetic to Rawls’s account of justification. I here attempt to fill these gaps in the already extensive literature associated with the method of (...) reflective equilibrium. At below, I review claims that Rawls’s method has relativistic implications. I also attempt, for purposes of argument, to buttress these claims by citing remarks of Rawls which could be interpreted as relativistic in character. At below, I consider problems of political reasoning as these arise in societies which are ill- and well-ordered in Rawls’s sense. At below, I consider problems of political reasoning as these arise between the members of two or more well-ordered societies, each of which is regulated by a different conception of justice. I also there adapt Williams’s distinction between notional and real confrontations between incompatible systems of beliefs in order to distinguish two kinds of conflict with respect to fundamental political principles. Finally, I show how a notion of broad reflective equilibrium can be deployed in order to solve those problems of political adjudication which may arise between the members of societies which have distinct conceptions of justice. At this point it should be clear that Rawls’s method of justification is not, in intention at least, relativistic in its implications. (shrink)

Since his article, ‘Outline for a Decision Procedure in Ethics,’ John Rawls has advocated a coherentist moral epistemology according to which moral and political theories are justified on the basis of their coherence with our other beliefs, both moral and nonmoral. A moral theory which is maximally coherent with our other beliefs is in a state which Rawls calls ‘reflective equilibrium’. In A Theory of Justice Rawls advanced two principles of justice and claimed that they are in reflective equilibrium. He (...) defended this claim by appeal to a hypothetical contract; he argued that parties in a position satisfying certain informational and motivational criteria, which he called ‘the original position,’ would choose the following two principles of justice to govern the basic structure of their society. (shrink)

IN A Theory of Justice, John Rawls deployed a social contract theory to vindicate liberal political principles of civil liberty and distributive justice without appeal to a utilitarian calculus. Rawls described his conception of political justice as "justice as fairness." Rational contractors, deliberating behind a "veil of ignorance," agree to a scheme of justice prior to knowing how the scheme materially affects their individual interests or conceptions of moral or nonmoral good. Perhaps the most striking and certainly one of the (...) most controversial features of Rawls's Theory was his argument that "the right" subordinates not only material interests in the economic sphere, but also individuals' fully considered conceptions of the moral good, human flourishing, and final ends. Hence, Rawls's theory of justice was meant to be a systematic alternative both to the economic pragmatism of other modern contract theorists as well as to the classical tradition of perfectionism in political theory. (shrink)