ABSTRACT

In John Rawls’s theory of Justice as Fairness, we have what is probably the most important contribution to political philosophy in the twentieth century, one with which both friends and foes must come to terms. Stuart Hampshire called it “the most substantial and interesting contribution to moral philosophy since the [Second World] War [wherein] the substance of a critical and liberal political philosophy is argued with an assurance and breadth of mind that puts the book in the tradition of Adam Smith and Mill and Sidgwick.”1 Robert Nisbett calls it the “long awaited successor to Rousseau’s Social Contract, the Rock on which the Church of Equality can properly be founded in our time.” In scope and power, it rivals the classics of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Deservedly, no philosophical work in the last quarter of a century has been quoted or debated more than this one. Fundamentally egalitarian (see quotation above), it seeks to justify the welfare state. Rawls accepts that liberal ideas of justice can only be justified where the “circumstances of justice” obtain, that is, in a situation of relative affluence like those in Western nations. In his second book, Political Liberalism (Harvard, 1994), he clarifies his position as attempting to provide political stability. He recognizes our society as “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage” (TJ, 4). A modern society is pluralistic, made up of vastly different worldviews with competing conceptions of the good. What Justice as Fairness aims to do is provide the ground rules for an overlapping consensus, the set of minimal, noncontroversial principles on which we can all agree and which ensure political stability (sufficient motivation to comply with and support the basic institutions of a society over time).