ABSTRACT
This chapter offers some speculative remarks about various conceptions of justice and of the concept of justice and examines their bearing on John Rawls's claims about the relation between moral and political philosophy. He himself defends the thesis of the priority of the right over the good, which would seem to be one of those long-standing philosophical controversies on which one might have wished to employ the method of avoidance. Thus clearly he thinks that in certain circumstances it is both possible and desirable to achieve a wider than an overlapping consensus, or at any rate, that in these circumstances political philosophers must risk the attempt. According to him, the relevant difference between the politician and the political philosopher would seem to be a matter of the scope of the practical political concern. There is a possible explanation of why someone might think that political philosophers have a practical aim while moral philosophers do not.
