Introduction

We are at a critical turning point in the history of human life on earth. It may be plausibly asserted that we are facing a global existential crisis. The nature of that crisis is a product of a growing awareness that ‘… we are not just billions of individuals and millions of collectivities but a single species alongside other species one whose survival is threatened by its own behaviour’ [1]. Rawls’s theory of justice argues that our behaviour is shaped by the institutions that we have created. If we want to change the future, then we need to critically scrutinize our institutions. This means we need to question the assumptions on which our confidence in our institutions is based.