ABSTRACT
In 1993, Rawls published Political Liberalism, his second major book.1 Political Liberalism marks the culmination of a major process of rethinking the project of justifying justice as fairness. Rawls is explicitly updating and correcting the arguments and ‘mistakes’ of A Theory of Justice. In doing so, he makes significant alterations to his account of constructivism. This chapter will give a clear account of changes as they bear on constructivism and will attempt to assess their impact on our general account of constructivist justification. The changes that Rawls makes to his theory are motivated by a concern to take seriously the impact of a proper recognition of the extent of pluralism. Since constructivism is intended as an adequate normative response to pluralism, if Rawls has underestimated its extent, we can expect revisions to be significant. Most importantly, for our purposes in Political Liberalism, Rawls explicitly discusses his constructivism, finds his constructivist starting points not in our considered convictions but in ‘public political culture’ and introduces the notion of overlapping consensus. The result is a ‘political’ constructivism that, at least at first glance and to many commentators, is very different from the constructivist position of A Theory of Justice. How different it actually is remains to be seen. On the one hand, Rawls tells us very explicitly and plainly what changes he has made and why. But on the other hand, there is much in both Political Liberalism and his other work of the time that should lead us to think carefully before we accept this straightforward picture.2 Thinking carefully about Rawls’s account of constructivism will encourage us to look again at what constructivism is more generally.
