ABSTRACT
Rawls’s A Theory of Justice is an important constructivist response to a concern with pluralism. On first reading, this may not be immediately obvious as his explicit intention is to provide a systematic alternative to the dominance of utilitarianism as the moral doctrine forming the basis of a constitutional democracy. Dissatisfaction with utilitarianism is most often expressed by pointing out the many ways in which its conclusions appear to directly contradict common moral sentiments or intuitions; that it cannot provide a satisfactory account of basic rights and liberties, that it does not take seriously the claim that we all lead separate lives and that we should therefore not be sacrificed for the benefit of others, that its characterization of the good is overly simplistic, for example. Rawls takes our moral intuitions very seriously. If a principle consistently contradicts our intuitions, then this is a good reason to look closely at its justification. As we shall see, matching our considered intuitions is not what he takes justification to consist in, but his constructivism takes intuitions seriously as starting points for justification. As we shall also see, he does so in a way that avoids regarding these intuitions as foundational.
