ABSTRACT

This chapter investigates John Rawls's approach with the aim of understanding how it combines desirability and feasibility criteria. Rawls's methodology investigates with reference to desirability and feasibility in Chandran Kukathas and Philip Pettit 1990. The chapter focuses on more specifically than the authors could on Political Liberalism and on The Law of Peoples. Rawls's realistic utopianism is the outcome of a revision process: starting from the early 1980s, Rawls modifies the scope and the status of his conception of justice justice as fairness as well as its justification. Rawls introduces are parallel to the development and the refinement of his meta-theoretical view about the role and the tasks of political philosophy. Feasibility is interpreted by Rawls in terms of stability. The fact of reasonable pluralism requires political philosophy to elaborate a conception of justice apt to be recognized as acceptable by all reasonable democratic citizens, no matter which reasonable comprehensive doctrine they endorse.