Rawls on Freedom and Equality

In my last posting I looked at and provided an exegetical reading of Rawls' first lecture on Kantian constructivism as published in The Journal of Philosophy. In this posting I turn to the second of Rawls' lectures in which he turns from the discussion of autonomy to the views of freedom and equality and how these features of the person are represented in the original position. This lecture also features an extended account of the notion of publicity and its place within a Kantian view.

Rawls opens this second piece however by returning to the "model-conception" of a well-ordered society. In returning to this Rawls points out that the model-conceptions he is discussing are special cases of even more general notions but he does not here undertake to determine the way of describing the latter. A well-ordered society is a self-sufficient association which strives to perpetuate itself but is also a closed system. It is viewed as productive, that is, as giving itself its own means of support and not, as is the case in some utopias, as essentially not in need of labour. The "circumstances of justice" under which it exists are both subjective and objective. The objective form of these is that there is moderate scarcity, the subjective form is that there exists contrary conceptions of the good within the society. Despite the subjective circumstances of justice the citizens of the well-ordered society take their institutions to satisfy their public conception of justice. This point is introduced as the manner in which we can both understand the way that citizens are able to have a dual view of justice and as the basis for a distinction between different levels of the notion of publicity.

Rawls distinguishes three levels of publicity. The first level is in terms of the principles of justice. These principles of justice meet the conditions of institutions defined in Theory. They are accepted by all and the knowledge that they are is itself general. They are also supported by the general consensus beliefs held and so buttressed in an epistemic way by "common sense". Since Rawls is working throughout with the conception of a modern democratic society this includes the methods and practices of scientific inquiry and its findings when taken to be settled. The final level of publicity includes the "complete" justification of the public conception of justice which is also taken to be fully known or at least publicly available. This "full justification" includes the connection between the model-conceptions of the person and social cooperation. A "full publicity condition" is met when a well-ordered society meets all these conditions. Such a full condition expresses fair terms of cooperation and is hence Reasonable.

The full condition is also one that is appropriate, according to Rawls, for the restricted purposes of political justice and may be less compelling for other moral notions. Given the principles of justice apply to the political constitution and to all basic institutions, and that such can shape the character and aims of the members of society, the fundamental terms of this cooperation should answer to the requirements of "full" publicity. When institutions are capable of answering to such requirements citizens can account for their beliefs in them in such a way that their account will strengthen the institutions themselves. Publicity thus ensures that free and equal persons are in a position to accept the background social influences that shape their conception of themselves as persons.

For many other moral notions public agreement cannot be reached so consensus is limited in scope to the public moral constitution and its associated terms of cooperation. With regard to public questions ways of reasoning and forms of evidence have to be presented in such a way that they are generally accessible. The conception of a well-ordered society applies to the notions of the good held by citizens the principle of liberty (effectively toleration) held previously by religion alone. The basis for this is precisely due to the role of publicity in the justification of the principles of justice.

Parties to the construction of the original position assess conceptions of justice subject to the constraint that their principles can be public conceptions. The basic level of publicity cannot be met unless there is agreement on rules of evidence and forms of reasoning and these must be limited to those allowed by forms of reasoning as given to "common sense". Unless this stipulation is made no agreement is possible. So, whilst particular views of the good may hold certain institutions and policies to be wrong, the holding of them lacks public force if it does not meet these criteria of common sense (or public reason). Agreement within the original condition is thus not just on principles of justice but also on the ways of reasoning and rules of weighing evidence. The subjective circumstances of justice thus determine ways in which agreement can be articulated.

The second level of publicity concerns the way that general beliefs of social theory and moral psychology enter which is as publicly known to the parties to the construction. Citizens are aware of the factors that support the principles of justice as stated in forms that are common. This does not mean all factors that might support such beliefs are admissible within the process of reasoning since those which belong to controversial doctrines or are stated in ways which cannot avoid such controversy are not public doctrines in Rawls' sense. The articulation of the agreed principles of justice is not required to overcome the subjective circumstances of justice. Rather, it is assumed that only coercion could overcome such circumstances and this would subvert the point of reaching agreement. 

Rawls' careful articulation of public doctrines does not require decision on the truth of the doctrines disallowed public roles. It does however play a role in indicating that whilst fundamental disagreement may never be overcome that such disagreement need not have adverse effects in society. The fundamental principles need to be justified in ways that are impartial to the differences within society if the subjective circumstances of justice are to be respected. 

Only after these points about publicity and public reasoning have been stated does Rawls turn to the account of freedom and equality that is the principal purpose of the second part of his treatment. Moral persons were argued in the first part to be moved by higher-order interests to exercise moral powers. Within a well-ordered society citizens are free in the sense that they hold themselves entitled to make claims on the design of social institutions. Such claims are based on the self-conception persons have within this society which is that they take themselves to be self-originating sources of valid claims.  A second aspect of freedom is that free persons recognize each other as having the moral power to form and articulate a conception of the good. Following from this second element of freedom is that citizens, as citizens, are assumed to have a reflective capacity to reflect on and to alter any final ends they have. Another way of putting this second element of freedom is that the citizens are essentially independent of the particular conceptions of the good they espouse since their public identity is not dependent on any particular such view. In private life such a conception does not apply since privately we take our views to be integral to our identity but this does not affect the public ideal of social cooperation.

Returning to the notion of a well-ordered society Rawls next states that we assume in this that citizens are fully cooperating members of it over the course of their life so the ideal of it does not include special conditions that prevent this being actualized at given times. This helps to make clearer the notion of equality that is here being worked with which states that the public conception of justice is one that all are capable of honouring and of being participants in. All are thus viewed as equally worthy of being represented in any procedure that determines the principles of justice that regulate the basic institutions of society. This does not mean that we don't allow, in the structure of the society, for the fact that some, by virtue of special abilities, may be better qualified to hold offices and positions but only that all, as equal citizens, are assumed to have a sense of justice that is equally sufficient relative to what is required of them.

Rawls next returns to the original position and observes that within it the two powers of moral persons are represented formally as, for example, we do not here give any specific content to the sense of justice possessed to parties within it. So the first power means here only that all participants can follow the most reasonable conception of justice. The second capacity is similarly presented formally meaning that the parties are assumed to be able to have a sense of the good. But parties are also here determinate persons in the sense that both these powers would, after the removal of the veil of ignorance, have specific content. But there is no antecedent principles external to the argument of the position to which anyone has to refer to derive their principles. Freedom as independence is represented in how the parties give priority to guaranteeing the conditions for realizing their highest-order interests. Given that parties can stand above their conceptions of the good and judge them they are independent from them.

The Kantian conception of the veil of ignorance is also stated by Rawls to involve this veil being "thick". It is not only, as with Hume, that we wish to prevent parties from reasoning according to threat advantage. We further wish to prevent specific given notions of the good from being decisive in determining the basis for general agreement. This thicker veil is thus intended to ensure the fullest recognition of the equal status of persons by preventing even the higher-order (but not highest-order) interests of some from weighing more than others. Equality is represented within the original position by taking rights and powers within the procedure of it to be distributed to all. The only relevant feature here is that the capacity for moral personality is fulfilled and accidents of fortune are given no place within the construction. 

Rawls unhappily concludes the second lecture with two misleading contrasts between his approach as articulated here and Kant's own views. The first contrast is between the primacy of the social in the view and the "individual" focus of the Categorical Imperative. This contrast is misleading since Rawls argues that the principles of social justice are understood by Kant to follow from personal considerations of a sort that weigh in moral decisions strictly so called. In fact the supreme principle of right is not derived from such personal considerations even though it is clearly related to the Categorical Imperative itself. The basis of such derivation is a lengthy and difficult question but suffice it to say that the rationale for treating one in relation to the other concerns the overall conditions for the possible sustaining of just relations and is not grounded on personal matters. Rawls' suggestion to the contrary here is based on a very loose reading of the Doctrine of Right, a work he nowhere gives any sustained interpretation of, including, surprisingly, in his lectures on political philosophy (which don't include lectures on Kant).

The second contrast concerns the relationship between Rawls' notion of the "full" publicity requirement and Kant's idea of the "fact" of reason. Here Rawls is emphasizing that his view of autonomy is based on the way that publicity conditions enable it to be given form. By contrast he takes the "fact" of reason to just imply a mysterious basis to autonomy. In fact Kant's account of publicity (as stated in Perpetual Peace) has no essential relationship to the idea of autonomy in his moral philosophy and nor does Kant model political philosophy by it though he does instead discuss a relationship between freedom and independence that has correlates with Rawls' view of full autonomy. Rawls' comparison here mixes up levels of articulation of his doctrine by reference to Kant's and is singularly unhelpful in enabling a relationship between them to be stated.

Rawls on Autonomy

In 1980, almost a decade after publishing A Theory of Justice,  Rawls delivered three lectures on the topic of "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" which were subsequently published in The Journal of Philosophy (from which page numbers are given). Over a series of postings I intend to present an exegesis of these lectures beginning here with the first which concerns the distinction between what Rawls terms "rational" and "full" autonomy. 

In opening the first lecture Rawls refers to the need to consider aspects of justice as fairness that he has not previously emphasised and to "set out more clearly the Kantian roots of that conception". This rationale for the lecture is set alongside a separate one of simply aiming to make the notion of Kantian constructivism more familiar. However the first rationale will be the more important given that what is being made familiar is integrally related to the further working out of the normative implications of A Theory of Justice.

The first part of the first lecture begins with a description of Kantian constructivism as specifying a conception of the person in a reasonable procedure of construction. Otherwise put the constructivist view being advanced sets up a procedure of construction that answers to certain requirements and the latter are understood to have their force in their reasonableness. Essentially the idea is to buttress the apparatus of Theory by showing how there is a connection between the person, as understood in a certain way, and the first principles of justice. The connection is by means of "a procedure of construction". 

Having begun by stating this point about the relation between the sense of the person and the first principles of justice Rawls goes on to argue that the conditions for justifying the latter require a public culture that is capable of sustaining them. In the absence of a sufficient basis for agreement amongst citizens the task of specifying a principle of justice becomes one of showing what is most reasonable to accept given a conception of the person. Within "democratic culture" as Rawls understands it here, which understanding is very broad, it is a sense that persons have moral capacities of a sort that is key. These moral capacities are what permit us to sustain the idea of treating persons as free and equal. If there is dispute at present over the way in which justice is centrally understood democratically then the Kantian procedure has to be one of demonstrating which principles of freedom and equality most reasonably meet the conditions of potential agreement.

Phrasing the beginning of his inquiry in terms of democratic culture ensures that Rawls conceives of his inquiry in a restricted way. It is not trans-historical but rather an inquiry concerned with modern conditions and it is not trans-cultural as it assumes the basic shape of democratic society. Further there is a form of hermeneutic at work in the inquiry being undertaken that expresses the view that there is at least a desire for agreement on the basic principles of justice. This desire for agreement is traced back here to the notion of "common sense" with Rawls assuming that it is either the case that we need to articulate the notions inherent within it or to propose to it instead conceptions and principles that are congenial to its "essential" form. As he further puts this:

The real task is to discover and formulate the deeper bases of agreement which one hopes are embedded in common sense, or even to originate and fashion starting points for common understanding by expressing in a new form the convictions found in the historical tradition by connecting them with a wide range of people's considered convictions: those which stand up to critical reflection. (518)

The way the process of disinterring from common sense the resolution of the problem modern democratic culture is apparently faced with is by means of articulation, in the first instance, of a conception of the person that is affirmed within this culture or that will be acceptable to those formed by it once critical reflection on it has taken place.

So Rawls is concerned with a "public conception" of justice that can be affirmed by all who regard their person in a certain way. This idea is part of the way that Rawls now understands the notion of "congruence" as what has to be provided is a conception of justice that fits our "deeper understanding of ourselves and our aspirations". This entails then that it fits the way that moral psychology resonates with us. This is reinforced by the view that the history and traditions embedded in this public life are resonant with the reasonable doctrine that is so uncovered. This does have a radical implication: "Apart from the procedure of constructing the principles of justice, there are no moral facts" (519).

After introducing the topic like this Rawls next specifies the way in which the conflict within democratic culture is understood by him although the ways he characterises this conflict is not singular. It is between two different traditions and one of them is associated with Locke, the other with Rousseau. However Rawls also refers to the difference Benjamin Constant spoke of between the liberties of the moderns and the liberties of the ancients with Locke associated with the moderns (and thus Rousseau with the ancients). The modern Lockean conception is concerned with civil liberties especially liberties of thought and conscience and also property rights and rights of association. The other ancient Rousseauist conception begins instead from equal political liberties and views civil liberties as subordinate. This appears to imply, in Kant's own terms, that Locke essentially provides the rudiments of a doctrine of private right whilst Rousseau provides one of public right and the task is bringing them together (as Kant sought to do in the Doctrine of Right).

Now in working out a way of specifying notions of freedom and equality that bring together these traditions Rawls introduces the idea of "model-conceptions" as embedded in his notion of justice as fairness. The two key notions in question are those of the "well-ordered society" and a "moral person". The "original position" is now presented as a third model-conception that mediates between the other two (and hence provides us with the means of understanding the process of construction). The means by which the "original position" works is by showing ways in which the citizens of a well-ordered society would have, using the capacities of moral persons, selected the principles that created their own society.

In the original position we begin, however, with a more restricted sense of the persons within it as being only rationally autonomous whereas the citizens of the well-ordered society would be fully autonomous. Rationally autonomous agents are those who possess the powers of formulation of hypothetical imperatives. Before proceeding further with a discussion of rational autonomy, however, Rawls first proceeds to describe the well-ordered society. Such a society would be regulated by a public conception of justice in the sense formulated by his account of institutions in the first section of Theory. This conception would be one understood to be accepted by all and known to be so shared. Further the basic structure of the society would be taken to actualize the conception of justice so understood and would be founded on reasonable beliefs. Within this arrangement the members of the society would treat each other as free and equal moral persons.

Moral persons would all possess the capacity to have a sense of justice and would have an equal right to determine the first principles of justice on which their society was governed. The freedom of these persons would consist in their ability to make claims on the design of institutions in the name of their fundamental aims and higher-order interests. The view of the well-ordered society is used to provide constraints on the way the original position should be set up as the idea that persons are free and equal has to be given place within the original position. In so beginning it operates fairly between persons and thus we have the idea that the procedure in question will settle the principles of justice fairly, an idea that is captured in the notion of justice as fairness.

Rawls' means of picturing the original condition is augmented, as in Theory, by the use of the device of the veil of ignorance. It is intended that the introduction of this device will ensure fairness between persons and thereby provide what Rawls terms "pure procedural justice". The principles of justice are to be constructed by a process of deliberation in which no antecedently given principles are given any particular weight. It is clear though that if a principle weighs heavily against rational assessment of interests it would be rejected. If the citizens of a well-ordered society are such as would regard themselves as moral persons then the parties to the original position must be such as to enable this self-conception to arise.

Having stated this much Rawls describes the capacities he takes to be essential to having moral powers. These are the capacity for an effective sense of justice on the one hand and the capacity to form and revise a rational conception of the good on the other. Persons have higher-order interests to realize and exercise these powers. These interests are then the ones that supremely have to be regulative of how the operation of the original condition is defined. We take the parties also to be "developed" morally in the sense that they aim at particular conceptions of the good. There is also a higher-order interest that each has of being able to prosecute this but this interest is not highest-order like that of realizing and exercising moral powers.

For the veil of ignorance not to prevent recognition of the powers so described we have to specify a means by which rational agreement can plausibly be reached. This is by means of an account of primary goods which will provide a yard-stick by means of which the parties to the original position can evaluate conceptions of justice. The primary goods are described here as including basic liberties (of Lockean sort), freedom of movement, powers and prerogatives of offices, incomes and wealth as all-purpose means and the social bases of self-respect. Primary goods are in general singled out as those generally necessary all-purpose means to enable us to realize and exercise our moral powers. The specified highest-order interests of persons thus select what is to count as a primary good.

So when we state that conceptions that would fail to recognise the interests of the parties to the agreement would fall, we are referring not to material interests, but rather to the interest they all have in enabling each other to develop and protect their moral powers. In the original position, therefore, the parties to the agreement are autonomous in not being bound beforehand by any given conception of justice but also in being moved solely by their highest order interests. This is what Rawls understands as the "rational autonomy" of the parties.

Full autonomy, by contrast, requires a further specification of social cooperation. Rawls argues that the notion of social cooperation contains two elements. The first is a sense of the fair terms of cooperation and these include conditions of reciprocity and mutuality. This element of cooperation is what Rawls now terms the Reasonable. The other element of cooperation, by contrast, is what he calls the Rational. The rational element of social cooperation concerns what each party to the cooperation in question is hoping to achieve by means of this cooperation. In the original position we have determined the rational by means of higher-order interests and acting rationally in relation to these interests includes adopting principles of instrumental reason. The Reasonable, by contrast, is incorporated into the background setup of the original position including in the sense that this position has to meet conditions of publicity.

The original position is set up to represent the minimum adequate notions of moral personality and when to this is added the sense equals in all relevant respects are to be treated equally this idea is meant to ensure that the original position is described in a way that is fair to all members of the agreement. The first subject of justice is also to be the basic structure of society or its main social institutions. 

The summation of the remarks Rawls presents here about the Reasonable and the Rational are to the effect that the Reasonable presupposes and subordinates the Rational. The Reasonable defines the fair terms of cooperation but it presupposes the Rational as without a sense that there are distinct conceptions of the good there is no real point to such cooperation. It restates essentially the argument made in Theory for the priority of the right over the good.

Full autonomy is a moral ideal that is part of the comprehensive ideal of the well-ordered society. Rational autonomy, by contrast, is the device by means of which the conception of the person is related to the procedure of arriving at definite principles of justice. 

Rawls on Congruence and Justification

The last 2 sections of Chapter IX of A Theory of Justice are also the last 2 sections of the whole book. In this posting I will treat them both in turn. Section 86, entitled "the good of the sense of justice" is intended to complete the argument for the view that there is a reasonable expectation that, in a well-ordered society, there would be congruence between justice and the specific conceptions of the good that are adopted by individuals. Since this argument concerning congruence was also motivated at the beginning of Chapter IX as the rationale for the whole argument of this chapter section 86 essentially completes the general purpose of the chapter. The concluding section 87 is meant not to add to this argument but, rather, to offer a general overall summary of the way in which the theory of justice as fairness has been "justified" in the book as a whole.


Section 86 opens with Rawls stating that the completion of the congruence argument basically requires an overall view of the notion of the well-ordered society. In this society the two moral powers of persons - the capacity for a sense of justice and the ability to pursue a particular conception of the good - are congruent with each other or so is the assumption and the argument of the chapter, which is completed here, is intended to show the reasons for taking this to be the case. The central reason for being concerned with the congruence between the two moral powers in the well-ordered society is that such congruence is assumed to be the basis of the stability of it. This does not require reviewing again the rationality of the selection of the principles of justice within the original position as we take for granted by this stage that this selection has been justified. The problem is, rather, "whether the regulative desire to adopt the standpoint of justice belongs to a person's own good" when we view the latter in the light of Rawls' "thin" theory of the good. When we arrive at this point we are no longer behind the veil of ignorance as the "thin" theory can be fully specified.


The justification of the view that it is rational for someone, merely following the thin theory of the good, to accept the claim of the sense of justice to be regulative of their conception of the good, is not equivalent to justification of the sense of justice to an egoist. Nor does Rawls aim to show that, in a well-ordered society, even an egoist would act from a sense of justice. Rawls is instead assuming that there does exist amongst the members of the well-ordered society a settled desire to act from the sense of justice and then raising the question of whether this desire is one that is consistent with the good of these people. This question presupposes only the "thin" theory of the good as anything wider would involve wider presuppositions. So the question concerns only those with a moral psychology that is already, at least in one of its relevant aspects, as we would ideally wish it to be.


Now this does not mean that the question has been so carefully curtailed as to be of little interest. So Rawls is not assuming for example that everyone simply does things due to motivation by pure conscientiousness. It is conceivable, even assuming that there is a settled desire to act from the sense of justice, that this settled desire is one that runs up against formidable resistance when acting upon it appears to cut against some key element of that persons' view of the good. Then the question may arise for them what to do and not be one that they simply take to have an obvious answer. 


Having stated the problem in this way Rawls proceeds to describe the elements of the "grounds of congruence". The first element is that the principles of justice are public, a point he consistently stresses. Since this is so the consideration of acting in a way that does not conform to the principles of justice is one in which we think of ourselves as prepared to act as free riders upon the public good. Given that the settled disposition to act from a sense of justice is one that is given reinforcement by the publicly acknowledged justification of the principles of justice the consideration of acting in such a way is sure to have psychic cost. Not only is this the case but failure to act from the sense of justice is something whose public effect we would have to acknowledge as impacting upon the way the institutions we have accepted to have a public basis would run. The importance of this consideration is that such institutions are also supported publicly by those with whom we are close. This point gives strong grounds for preserving our sense of justice.


Another element of the grounds of congruence is the way that the participation in the public good of the well-ordered society satisfies the Aristotelian Principle. The well-ordered society is one that realises to a pre-eminent degree the forms of human activity and the way in which the cooperation of persons safeguards the well-being of each one of us. To really share in the goods of this society we must acknowledge the principles that regulate activities. A final reason underpinning congruence is bound up with the Kantian conception of the person which states that acting justly is something we want to do inasmuch as we are free and equal rational beings. 


Assuming that the reference to publicity, the Aristotelian Principle and the Kantian conception of the person provide the chief reasons within the "thin" theory of the good to underpin congruence we can now ask whether these reasons are decisive in motivating members of the well-ordered society to generally act in accordance with their sense of justice. It appears that this leads us to a question about how to balance contrary principles. But an element that has not yet been considered is what it is that acting from the sense of justice really requires of us. The congruence between it and our conception of the good depends upon the content of the specific notion of right that has determined the sense of justice taking the form it does. So the good of justice is, we are clear, not akin to that provided by classical utilitarianism which required us to sacrifice our interests when this would be necessary for the greater good of all. The reason why the principles of justice defended by Rawls does not have this stringency is due to the priority of the first principle of justice. It would be hazardous to freedom to accept the stringent requirements defended by writers such as Sidgwick. This is already a point in favour of the view that it is possible to act in accordance with the sense of justice as Rawls conceives it as such a sense of justice is not so stringent and out of keeping with the demands of common sense as the view of Sidgwick.


This does not mean that there are not possible costs to following our sense of justice in action. Certain things will be ruled out for us as possible actions if we follow it. This point is defended by Rawls by an extended comparison between acting from the sense of justice and acting from a view of love of others. The Kantian conception of the person underpins this point and shows grounds for giving first priority to our sense of justice. The principles of justice meet the conditions of finality, they are regulative of our behaviour and acting in accordance with other things is constrained by the claims of the principles of justice. The Kantian conception of the person points to the way that our freedom is best expressed by acting from the sense of justice. Acting against the sense of justice is therefore sure to produce feelings of guilt and shame and set for us a demanding standard of consistency. 


It is possible that there are some persons, even in a well-ordered society, who do not take the affirmation of the sense of justice to be a good. For such people the thin theory of the good has proved insufficient to ground a regulative sentiment in favour of the sense of justice. The question of how to respond to such people requires recourse to partial compliance theory. We have seen that the principles of right are collectively rational and that affirmation of the sense of justice is a collective asset. Given this it is rational to authorise the measures required to maintain just institutions. The nature of those who have not found it part of their good to affirm the sense of justice is unfortunate for them and it is not required to provide sufficient reasons further to convince them. It would be true, however, if there were many such people that this would be an element of instability within the society and the degree to which such persons were present would effect the degree to which penal devices might be required within it. So long as there is no more stable conception of justice than the one Rawls has defined this point does not count against it.


In concluding the congruence argument Rawls specifies in more detail his definition of goodness. In a well-ordered society it is the case that behaving in a way that manifests a definite acceptance of the requirements of the sense of justice is good for each person within it. A well-ordered society is also a "good" society as it satisfies the principles of justice and enables a stable pattern to develop by which individuals come to affirm the sense of justice as regulative of their view of the good.


The final section of Chapter IX and of the book as a whole is mainly intended to address the question of what type of justification the work has produced for Rawls' theory. It is not a justification by reference to the view that there are self-evident principles, hence it is not a rationalist justification. It is also not a justification by means of reference to non-moral properties that are argued, by introducing appeals to common sense and science, to have some important normative significance. So it is also not a view that is broadly "realist" or "naturalist" and nor does it draw upon the justificatory strategies that would be appropriate for such views. 


The three parts of the work are intended to make a unified argument by showing first the essentials of the structure of the view, then applying them to the examination of institutions and finally showing that the view is psychologically feasible. The first part of the argument proceeded by reasonable stipulations concerning choice. The second part related these stipulations to the ways that common sense comprehends the institutions required for our common way of life. The third part looked at questions of stability and congruence. 


Rawls considers possible objections to the structure of justification his argument displays. It might be thought that Rawls' theory is grounded on a simple empirical appeal to agreement or that it depends on an unreasonably restrictive view of feasible conceptions in the choice situation. The response to the first part of this objection is that Rawls' theory proceeds from commonly held views. Now as to the charge that it is unreasonably restrictive in its consideration of alternatives it is less clear that leading candidates widely recognised are not all considered. This does not mean that all views are included and the basis of assessment of other views would require presentation of them and consideration of whether or how they related to views that have been looked at. The list considered is though one that arises from the history of moral philosophy. 


The original position is intended to bring together reasonable constraints into a single conception so that the selection of principles of justice can proceed. The selection of these constraints is not arbitrary. Ordering and finality seem obvious criteria within the choice situation for example. Publicity, by contrast, ensures that the process of justification within the situation is one that can appeal to all parties involved and to be endorsed by all as something that is not chosen for special reasons by some part of the group using esoteric methods of choice. The original position is thus intended to be a kind of "constrained minimum" set of conditions. Each part of the conditions is reasonable taken singly and put together provide a criteria of right independent of the presumed good of any member of the situation. Disinterested motivation is assumed with regard to the parties and this asks little of the parties given the veil of ignorance. Part of what arises from assuming it is an obvious rational basis for freedom of conscience and convergence then on the priority of liberty.


The Kantian components of the theory are related now by Rawls to the way the theory is justified. The general conception of rational choice defines the way that autonomy and the moral law are to be understood as it does also provide a way of grasping the good of community. One thing that emerges clearly here however is that the Kantian conception of the person is part of the "Archimedean point" by means of which the basic structure of society can be judged. This occurs by means of the use of the original position to first determine the content of justice and the later reference back to what has emerged from it as the basis of our sense of justice. The original choice situation is one that allows for the interests that define parties to include determinate attachments. But the principles of justice are not derived from particular principles such as respect for persons. Rather the principles of justice are such as to give a basis for interpretation of such principles. The theory of justice is thus intended to give a rendering of Kantian ideas. 


Once the original position is presented as the basis of the choice situation it provides a way that the social world can always be grasped and responded to. It is an objective situation that recognises autonomous decision. It is akin, says Rawls in his stirring conclusion, to seeing our situation sub specie aeternitatis. "Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view."

Rawls' Grounds for the Priority of Liberty

The argument concerning the priority of liberty in A Theory of Justice is presented in a few places. In section 39 it was "defined" and in section 46 it was related to other cases of priority. In presenting the reasons for the principles of justice in section 26 the account of liberty that was presented was also one in which the swopping of lesser for greater liberty was shown not to be a reasonable outcome for the acceptance of contracting parties within the original position. In section 82 as Rawls moves towards the conclusion of the whole book he brings together and summarises the arguments for the priority of liberty in a well-ordered society as seen from the point of view of the original position. In this posting I am going to concentrate on how the arguments given in the latter do more than just demonstrate the grounds for the priority of liberty. The arguments also show that the suggestion made by Parfit that Rawls' account of the deliberative rationality that Rawls is articulating is desire-based and shows, to the contrary, that the recognition of interests by Rawls is one that is intrinsically normatively grounded.


The argument of section 82 opens by referring to the way the conception of the well-ordered society is a notion that requires regulation by a public conception of justice. If there is a well-ordered society then the members of it all view each other as free and equal moral persons. Now, in describing what is meant in determining each other as free and equal moral persons, Rawls refers to "the fundamental aims and interests" in the name of which each of them thinks it possible to make legitimate claims on each other. The way to understand these "aims and interests" is central to replying to the suggestion of Parfit that Rawls' moral psychology is essentially desire-based and to show in detail why this is not the case. One of the ways it becomes obvious that the account of "aims and interests" Rawls is drawing on here is not a desire-based moral psychology is that he explicitly and openly says that a right to equal respect and consideration is central to determining the principles by which the basic structure of their society is to be governed. Alongside this point about a right to equal respect is the sense of justice that would normally govern the conduct of all the members of the well-ordered society.


The original position itself is specified as governed by the constraints of right as these constraints determine the form an acceptable set of principles can take. Amongst the constraints of right that would thereby define the form of a well-ordered society is that the conception of justice that governed it should be a publicly justifiable one. It is within the constraint of such publicity that we comprehend the notion of the members of it as free and equal moral persons as this way of viewing the person (what we can generally term a "Kantian" conception of persons) are ones to whom principles of justice are publicly accessible and justifiable. The original position embodied principles of reciprocity and equality as further elements of the constraints of right and it is in the context of recognition of these principles that Rawls indicates that a basic rationale for the priority of liberty is that fundamental aims and interests of all persons are protected by it. So a first sense given to the understanding of these "aims and interests" is in terms of equal reciprocal relations between persons.


Now the way that these "aims and interests" are recognised tells one a great deal about how they are understood. The first "interest" Rawls here mentions is that which people have in religion. Religious interests are recognised in terms of equal liberty of conscience for all contracting parties. The general nature of the religious interest is recognised only since no one would be aware, under the veil of ignorance, of possessing any particular religious belief. An "aim" of persons is clearly to defend any given religious belief that they may possess since they, as particular persons, will hold to some definite religion. The "strains of commitment" of the original position will be such that contracting parties will see the point of giving precedence to liberty. 


Having given first a "religious" interest and specifying the concomitant "aim" that goes with it Rawls secondly looks at how "higher-order interests" in general shape and regulate the social institutions that will themselves shape other "interests". The recognition of the contracting parties as "free" persons is reflected in the understanding that they each have of an "interest" in having the ability to adopt, revise and alter, their conceptions of the good. This is another basis for recognition of the priority of liberty. The basic structure thus should be governed by the account of autonomy and objectivity that Rawls earlier provided.


The arrival at the principles of justice as a result of deliberation within the original position occurs by means not just of the constraints of right that govern the position but also by means of the way that persons within this position are moved by a "certain hierarchy of interests". The highest-order interests and fundamental aims of the parties are reflected in the priority given to liberty and the means that enable them to "advance their other desires and ends" is explicitly stated to have a subordinate place. Not only is this so, but, as we shall see, in the sense meant by desire-based theories of reasons, Rawls does not recognise "desires" here as having any real role at all. There are, for example, "interests" in liberty which have a real objective in terms of establishing basic liberties but this is not the kind of "interest" that is invoked by desire-based theories of deliberative rationality. The kind of "interest" involved in liberty is, as Rawls puts it, a "higher-order" one as it regulates all the ways that "interests" can be expressed within a well-ordered society.


This point is supplemented by the argument concerning the kinds of attitudes and feelings that would be generated within a well-ordered society, the argument that included the previous account of envy. The point of the account of envy was to respond to the kind of objection to the well-ordered society that suggests that within it there could be a form of competitive/comparative relation between persons that would be socially destructive. In other words, a more equal society might make people more obsessed with their relative share of social wealth. Against this view Rawls wishes to show that the well-ordered society would lead, rather, to people taking less interest in relative positions. The presence of envy would have less sway, at least in a destructive sense. This is not due to a lack of concern with status since recognition of self-respect as a basic primary good ensures instead that relating to others as worthy of respect is something central within the society. But the basis for self-respect is grounded not on relative share of income but instead on the public recognition of the equality of rights. Since there is such equality of rights there is no incentive to politically seek other ways of having status understood as central to worth that is non-public in form. 


One of the reasons why this argument is thought to hold by Rawls is due to the symmetrical reason why no one would wish to be publicly inferior as that would be damaging to self-esteem. Similarly attempting to reach a non-public form of self-esteem has the difficulty that it indicates a view of others as inferior to oneself, a conception that has no public endorsement and would rather lead to a general aversion to the one wishing to find expression for their view. Public attitudes of mutual respect have an essential place in maintaining a political balance between persons and in assuring everyone of their own worth and the acceptance of equal liberties is a central way in which this is expressed.


The distribution of material means in the well-ordered society is taken care of by principles of pure procedural justice and the good of social union is maintained by supporting the primary good of self-respect. The application of the difference principle allows for what was previously determined as excusable envy and this helps to show the grounds for the priority of liberty. The public knowledge of the facts about each other reflected in the general recognition of the Kantian conception of the person is both based in the culture of the well-ordered society and furthered by its institutional arrangements. The reasoning that led to the principles of justice and that can support it is of a form that is publicly available.


Notable in the whole argument of section 82 is that the interests that are recognised as decisive in it are not ones that are reflective of "desires" in the sense indicated in "desire-based" views of reasons. So, for example, they are not desires simply taken as given or as reflective of mere natural facts. They are rather civilly understood desires and desires that fundamentally reflect interests in recognition of aspects of personhood that are enshrined in the Kantian conception of the person. So not only does section 82 summarise and complete the arguments for the priority of liberty but it confirms that Rawls' general moral psychology is not a desire-based one.

Rawls on Autonomy and Social Union

The final chapter of A Theory of Justice is concerned with the congruence of the right and the good in a well-ordered society. Another way of expressing the same point is to say that Rawls here attempts to show the relationship between the notion of goodness as rationality and justice as fairness. The overall point is thus to arrive at the view that an effective sense of justice as recognised within the governing of institutions is part of the good that would be rationally endorsed by each one of us.


The first two sections of Chapter IX are concerned with autonomy on the one hand and the idea of social union on the other. In starting with an account of autonomy Rawls wishes to begin by responding to suspicion of the psychological roots of the sense of justice. The basic suspicion he considers is motivated by a kind of psychological reductionism which views the origin of the sense of justice in the morality of authority by which young children are directed as casting suspicion upon the subsequent development of a morality of principles. In response Rawls points out that in the well-ordered society the basic rudiments of education have been governed by application of the principles of justice to the situation of the child. So none of the ideals upheld in the educational process are based on exploiting particular weaknesses or on devaluing the specific potentials of the child in question. 


The Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness requires that action on the principles of justice be understood as autonomous action which means that the principles in question express conditions that are defined by the nature of free and rational beings. So the basic guideline for educational practices has to be training for autonomy. Rawls wishes as well to show that autonomy is compatible with objectivity and does this by recourse to the device of the original position. Autonomous principles are chosen there as such principles involve recognition of the contracting parties as free and equal rational beings. The "objectivity" of the principles is stated in the generality of their application which include a sense of them that means they are stated without partiality. So the principles that are chosen in the original position are objective in not including deference to any given persons or treating any particular principle as based only on alleged special considerations.


Part of the point of such an objective mode of appraisal of principles is precisely to remove the barriers to agreement that are attached to specific positions in ordinary non-ideal intercourse. Acceptance of the principles of right and justice enables relations to others to be defined in terms that are civic rather than merely personal. So the idea of the original position is meant to give sense to both the ideas of autonomy and objectivity. This is a specific kind of view of these values and one that has to defended against other views. So autonomy is not to be understood, as it is often is, simply as respect for the particular conscience of any given individual. Rawls' earlier treatment of civil disobedience already demonstrated this feature of his view, a feature that prevents simple dependence on "subjective" views of principles. A conscience can be well or poorly guided and it is poorly guided if it fails to manifest respect for the principles of justice which is why justified civil disobedience was justified precisely by its reference to such principles and not simply by appeal to conscience alone. It is not conscience that is thus respected in the valuation of autonomy, it is rather the personality of the person, their attribute, that is, of being a person that is respected. 


So the earlier account of civil disobedience spelled out in Chapter VI of Theory is to be evaluated as specifying in terms of partial compliance theory the ideal conception of autonomy that Rawls is laying out at the beginning of Chapter IX. This is important as it indicates that autonomy is not to be viewed, in terms of justice as fairness, as a mere reference to either conscience or, with this, to reliance upon the virtue of integrity. Appeal to integrity has, as Rawls puts it here, great appeal in times of moral uncertainty where it appears to define a bed-rock value. Whilst Rawls indicates that such virtues are part of the excellence of free persons they are far from socially sufficient precisely due to the way they define virtues without reference to a contentful sense of life. It is only by reference to a kind of conception of what life one should live that the virtues of integrity define anything but it is then the case that this conception gives the value rather than the integrity of commitment taken alone.


Rawls arrives next at the point that the two principles of justice define what he terms "an Archimedean point" for appraising institutions as well as the desires and aspirations that institutions generate. Because we can refer to these principles we do not need to define an ideal of society by reference to principles of organic unity or by some sense of a pre-lapsarian past. However the objections to the general theory that Rawls presents have tended to insist on a sense of communitarian value that it is argued the allegedly "individualistic" bias of his theory does not allow recognition of. In response, in section 79, Rawls turns to elaborating a conception of social union that is meant to show that the congruence of the right and the good can define a well-ordered society in such a way that this society would recognise the achievement of the good of community.


In setting out a conception of social union that is meant to capture this sense of the good of community Rawls begins by reminding us of the conditions of the original position. A central aspect of the original position was that the parties know that they are subject to the circumstances of justice. Amongst such circumstances are the plurality of conceptions of the good amongst participants in the original position. This ensures that there is a potential conflict amongst participants as well as a unity of interest. Having reminded us of this plurality of conceptions as part of the circumstances of justice Rawls goes on to discuss how the relation between this fact and the conflicting one of the unity of interest of members of the agreement can be recognised in distinct ways by different positions. In making this point Rawls thus intends to draw an important contrast between the conception of justice as fairness and a key competing position.


The central idea that governs the way the original position is viewed by justice as fairness is that we begin from "the weakest possible" assumptions. The conditions are defined in ways that are "simple and reasonable" but the collision between interests is assumed to be great initially with the result that the way to resolve the conflict requires a comprehensive theory. Having specified the conditions of the original position in this way Rawls now contrasts the conception of it that is embodied in justice as fairness with a key rival view. The rival view is one that takes the basic structure of society as defined by the conditions that are fed only in to the original position by justice as fairness. On this conception we arrive at a notion that Rawls terms that of a "private society". Key to such a notion of society is that the entities that comprise it (whether individual persons or social groups) are assumed to have ends that are either competing or independent but not, in any event, complementary. A second element of the notion of "private society" is that institutions are taken to have no special value in themselves so that engaging with institutions is really a burden only undertaken for the realisation of private ends. The good of others is never taken as a prime datum for any actor.


On the conception of "private society" it follows that division of advantages is simply a function of power and strategic positioning. It is not impossible that a fair outcome might arise within such a set-up though it would be fortunate if it does so. Public goods will be valued largely instrumentally and relations judged in terms of the prices put upon them as in a market mechanism. The stability of such a society will rest primarily on effective use of sanctions. Once the idea of such a society is specified it becomes apparent that the alleged "individualism" of justice as fairness is not of the sort that endorses private social arrangements. And this is shown in the commitment of justice as fairness to the conception of goodness as rationality. 


On the view of goodness as rationality it follows that there are shared final ends that are possessed by persons and that common institutions express these ends. One of the reasons why this view flows from the idea of goodness as rationality is that individual potentialities are always greater than can be expressed so that each of us has, of necessity, to limit themselves in terms of what talents we choose to exercise. It is only through social union that we can participate in the total sum of the realised natural assets of others. This occurs both over time and within each generation. There are many forms of social union from families and friendships up to organisations that prosecute particular aims of scientific and artistic relations. However Rawls uses the example of a game to draw out the basic characteristics of social unions. With a game there are four sorts of ends: there is the end of the aim of the game as defined by its rules; the end of the motives of the particular participants including desire for exercise, etc. motives which can vary in weight and intensity for each participant; the social purposes of the game which may be little attended to by participants but evident to a third-party observer; and the shared end of all involved that this should be a "good" game. The last point is one that can only be reached by general compliance with the rules (the aim of the game) and by the players all playing their best. So the game is, in the broad sense, a collective achievement.


The notion of the shared end with which Rawls concludes his analysis of a game does not imply that in social unions all wish for the same thing (any more than they do in a game since most games are competitive!). It is rather meant to define an agreed scheme of conduct so that each can relate to the others  by means of it. Games are a simple illustration of a general point about social unions and a well-ordered society is not merely one social union amongst others but is rather the type of the social union of social unions. This is because it includes two characteristic features that are central to it. On the one hand it is a shared final end of all members of society and on the other its institutional forms are taken to have intrinsic value. So it defines the two central forms of goodness: it is both finally good and intrinsically good.


The well-ordered society is finally good in defining a shared end of mutual cooperation which arises from every member of the society having an effective sense of justice. This sense of justice defines a regulative condition for all and thus defines finality in a moral sense. The intrinsic good of the institutions involved is a more complicated matter. Firstly, the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness requires us to say that upholding just institutions is a good for each member of the society. But, further, the Aristotelian Principle holds also for institutional forms and shows that a just constitutional order provides a framework for all smaller and more closely defined social unions. Each person understands the first principles that govern the whole scheme and the plan of each is given a wider vista than it would otherwise possess. The regulative public intention is that the constitutional order should realise the principles of justice. The collective activity thus engaged in defines a form of Aristotelian Principle.


The next point is that the moral virtues, excellences of persons, would be displayed in the public life of a well-ordered society. This shows, as Rawls puts it, that "the collective activity of justice is the preeminent form of human flourishing". So the public realisation of justice would define the value of community, the point that, at the beginning of section 79, Rawls wished to show. This does not mean, as Rawls concludes the section by demonstrating, that the ideal social union would abolish the division of labour. One of the reasons why it would not is that the ideal social order would express our dependence on others not try to overcome this. Similarly it is not going to be possible that any individual become an exemplar of all virtues or talents. It is rather the collective activity of society that is to become the overall good of each of its members. So the just social union of social unions would define not an abolition of separation of labour but rather a way in which the activities of each can come to manifest themselves in ways that enrich all.

Rawls on the Well Ordered Society

The previous Rawls posting closed the discussion of Chapter VII of A Theory of Justice and in this one I am going to open the account of Chapter VIII. The title of Chapter VIII is "The Sense of Justice" and this notion does indeed get explicated, in at least a preliminary fashion, in this chapter. However, in the paragraph introducing the chapter Rawls introduces a change in focus here when compared with the last chapter and states, in the process, that Chapter VIII is to be understood as the first stage of discussion of "the problem of stability", by contrast to the account of the "good" given in Chapter VII. Before looking in detail at the first section of Chapter VIII it is first worth spending a bit of time with the notion of its relationship to the previous and subsequent chapters.


The shift announced from a concern with the "good" to that of "stability" is one that hides the continuity between Chapters VII and VIII. Just as Chapter VII concluded with an account of the good for persons that included a rudimentary theory of virtue and vice, so also the first few sections of Chapter VIII concerns different levels of moral development, including thereby a description of moral sentiments. Indeed, the basic subject of Chapter VIII is nothing else than a general account of moral psychology. Given that this is so, there is rather less of a shift in focus from Chapter VII to Chapter VIII than Rawls' introductory remarks to the latter suggest. In fact, within Chapter VII  it was stated that it concerned the good for persons and that later Rawls would look at social goods. This does mark the difference between the discussion in Chapter VII and that in Chapter IX. Chapter VIII presents, by contrast, an intermediate level of consideration which is meant to show how the good for persons is best viewed as embedded within a social sense of the good.


If Rawls' contrast between the foci of Chapters VII and VIII is, to an extent, misleading, however, there is still some sense in viewing Chapter VIII as providing considerations of a sort that Chapter VII did not include. What is fundamentally at issue in Chapter VIII is a preparation for the concluding chapter in which the congruence of the sense of justice with the sense of our own good is laid out and this was only hinted at in Chapter VII whereas Chapter VIII consistently indicates a concern with this question. 


The first section of Chapter VIII concerns the concept of a well-ordered society (WOS). This conception was first described at the very beginning of Theory where it was determined as a society "designed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice", a determination repeated here. Having restated this notion Rawls next spends some time expounding not, initially at least, on the idea of the "good" of the members of the society but, instead, on the sense of a "public conception of justice" (my italics). The key point about this is that "everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice". This public point is subsequently stressed as essential to justice as fairness. This occurs through first a discussion of the original position and then an account of the WOS. The original position is framed in such a way that the principles chosen are assumed to be ones that can be publicly justified and this is part of the way that the probable effects of adopting principles of justice is assessed there. Any conceptions of justice that depend on esoteric elites holding back knowledge are rejected on principle and the conception of justice adopted is one that is assumed can be based on generally available knowledge concerning people and their place in society, a consideration that has importance in subsequent sections of Chapter VIII.


If the original position is thus constrained by reference to publicity conditions it follows that the conception of the WOS will have to fulfil the conditions that were specified during the course of deliberation in the original position. Hence the members of the WOS will have the desire to act in accordance with the principles of justice given that these principles will be known to regulate the conduct of all within it. It is after specifying the sense of public adherence to the principles of justice as a central feature of the WOS that Rawls turns, for the first time in this chapter, to considering the idea of stability. A conception of justice is more stable if "the sense of justice that it tends to generate is stronger and more likely to override disruptive inclinations and if the institutions it allows foster weaker impulses and inclinations to act unjustly". In presenting the test for the stability of conceptions of justice in this way Rawls presents what are, effectively, two different tests. On the one hand a conception of justice is more stable if it has a resilient psychological appeal whilst on the other hand it is stable if, by following it, we are led to construct institutions that, in their elementary functioning, discourage unjust inclinations. The first of these tests of stability is one that can be assessed by means of moral psychology, the second, by contrast, requires a conception of social institutions. This marks the real difference between Chapters VIII and IX as Chapter VIII addresses the stability test in relation to moral psychology, whilst the discussion of congruence in Chapter IX, by contrast, is meant to outline the way in which the good of persons can be connected to a view of social institutions.


The stability tests thus require to be built into the original position just as it was regulated by requirements of publicity. The need for such a test in relation to moral psychology is evident in the sense that, without such a test having been ventured, there are no grounds for considering the anthropological realism of the conception offered. So the concluding chapters of Theory are meant to provide a basis for the claim that justice as fairness is a more stable conception of justice than others on offer. This is so despite Rawls admitting here that the criterion of stability is not alone decisive. What is meant in stating this is that it is possible for a view of justice to be advanced which takes little notice of the criterion of stability and Rawls interprets Bentham's utilitarianism in this way. However, even should this interpretation of Bentham be correct what it would show would only be that such a doctrine was a limit case with regard to conceptions of justice since the majority of such conceptions adjust themselves in more or less explicit ways to some features of what is taken to be humanly sustainable. The stability criterion is effectively meant to show how a conception of justice would in practice generate its own support and in Chapter VIII this test is applied by virtue of a general theory of moral sentiments being provided.


Within the first section of Chapter VIII Rawls describes the notion of stability as part of a theory of systems, systems that have reached equilibrium. In so doing Rawls draws upon some views developed within economics that are specified in the following way:

Three things are essential: first, to identify the system and to distinguish between internal and external forces; second, to define the states of the system, a state being a certain configuration of its determining characteristics; and third, to specify the laws connecting the states.

On this conception a system is in stable equilibrium when departures from it call into play forces that will tend to bring it back to its initial state. This function will be general assuming the shocks are within reasonable boundaries. Equilibriums are unstable whenever shocks force great changes within the internal operation of the system. The ability to adjust well to such shocks should be manifested within a time frame that is one that those within the system are able to bear though this notion is naturally left vague.

As far as Rawls is concerned the system in question is the basic structure of the society, a "complex", as he terms it, of political, economic and social institutions. In assessing the relative stability of conceptions of these the operative assumption throughout Theory is that of a generally self-contained national community, which is clearly a simplifying assumption. It does not imply that there is no change in the institutions but that any change within them is governed by continuous reference back to the conceptions of justice that is meant to govern their operation. One of the things taken to assure this is the development of moral sentiments that support the conceptions of justice.


Having arrived at this picture Rawls pauses to consider theories of moral sentiments and refers to two general traditions with regard to them. On the one hand there is the empiricist theory that has guided utilitarianism and which Rawls takes to also be reflected in the form of social psychology known as "social learning theory". A major contention of this theory is that the point of moral training is to supply what are termed "missing motives". What is taken to be missing is any original disposition towards principled right action. Given that this is missing it is the task of society to encourage such dispositions artificially. This is done by use of authority to mark approval and disapproval of conduct and to do this by means of rewards and punishments in order to produce a general sense of right and wrong. This view can be seen to be a kind of Pavlovian social conditioning view of moral sentiments. It is backed up by the sense that it is necessary to acquire moral sentiments at a stage prior to being able to understand them. Rawls thus views psychoanalytic conceptions of social learning to be a variant on the general empiricist tradition.


By contrast to this tradition the other view, which Rawls terms "rationalist" is associated by him with Rousseau, Kant, Mill and Piaget in which the development of innate capacities is encouraged. Taken in the generic sense in which Rawls pictures it this latter tradition is viewed as assuming natural sympathy exists between persons which provides an affective basis for the moral sentiments. Mill hence speaks of acceptable principles of reciprocity and tendencies to sociality. Such a model does not primarily stress external authority for social norms or the acquisition of new motives but rather the development of capacities already present towards their appropriate maturation.


Whilst it might have been expected that Rawls would view the latter position as more congenial with justice as fairness than the former he rather states that he assumes that there is much sound in both traditions and that he will try to combine them in what he terms a "natural" way. The subsequent next three sections of Theory aim to do this through an ideal picture of moral development within a WOS.