Rawls is known for his work A
Theory of Justice through which he breaks the tradition in the political
philosophy. Previously the main concern of the political philosophy is the
discourses of authority of the state. Only after the publication of Rawls’s
A Theory of Justice (1975) do the scholars pay more attention to the
problem of justice. Nevertheless after subsequence consideration Rawls
acknowledges that his idea concerning justice he proposes in A Theory of
Justice needs a revision. He thinks that the idea of justice that he
developed in A Theory of Justice is unrealistic because it is part of
the comprehensive conviction. It is unrealistic expectation that the citizens
will base the political discussion and decision on that conception of justice
when it is known that modern democratic culture “is always marked by a
diversity of opposing and irreconcilable religious, philosophical, and moral
doctrine”, (Rawls, 1993: 3-4). To revise the theory proposed in the previous
work, Rawls writes Political Liberalism in which he attempts to find a
proper relation between the conception of justice and the plurality of
comprehensive doctrine.
Considering that his motivation
in Political Liberalism is to work out in finding a proper relation
between a conception of justice with the plurality of comprehensive doctrine,
it is for sure that Rawls is struggling to solve the modern political
problematic. In his observation of the modern society Rawls discovers that it
“is characterized not simply by a pluralism of comprehensive religious,
philosophical and moral doctrines but by a pluralism of incompatible yet
reasonable comprehensive doctrines” (Ibid.) and to each whoever holds
it, the comprehensive doctrine is believed as the absolute truth; it is
therefore “no one of these doctrine”, says Rawls, “is affirmed by citizens
generally. Nor should one expect that in the foreseeable future one of them or
some other reasonable doctrine will ever be affirmed by all or nearly all
citizens” (xvi). Given that members of modern society live in a plurality of
reasonable yet incompatible comprehensive doctrines is a normal way of life,
the question is how is it possible to develop stability within this plural
society?
Rawls’s primary concern when he
outlines his political liberalism is to find out “the most appropriate conception
of justice specifying the fair terms of social cooperation between citizens as
regarded as free and equal citizens and as fully cooperating members of society
over a complete life, from generation to the next” (3) and "to find the
grounds of toleration in society which is characterized by reasonable
pluralism" (5). Rawls’s political liberalism consists of two stages. The
first is to work out to establish the conception of political justice as
freestanding principle. While the second one is to find a way by which this
conception of political justice can gain the support of an overlapping
consensus. This last stage then becomes a precondition to create a just and
stable society.
As stated earlier the purpose of the first
stage of political liberalism is to work out for the conception of political
justice. Here Rawls ascribes three characteristic features for his conception
of political justice. The first feature concerns with the subject of a
political conception. No doubt this conception is a moral conception but it
works out for a specific subject, namely the political, social and economic
institution. In another word this political conception of justice applies to
the “basic structure” of the society. The second feature relates to its
presentation, means that the conception must be freestanding and independent
from other wider convictions. In working out for political liberalism it is
therefore indispensable to differentiate political conception of justice from
other comprehensive convictions. The difference between the two conceptions
lies in the scope. It is considered a comprehensive conviction “when it
includes conceptions of what is of value in human life, and ideals of personal
character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational
relationships, much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our
life as a whole.” In contrast, “a political conception tries to elaborate a
reasonable conception for the basic structure alone and involves, so far as
possible, no wider commitment to any other doctrine.” The last feature has to
do with the content of political conception of justice; it “is expressed in
terms of certain fundamental idea seen as implicit in the public political
culture of a democratic society.” Thus political conception of justice, as has
been mentioned earlier, is inseparable from a democratic culture. It “starts
from within this certain political tradition and takes as its fundamental idea
that of society as a fair system of cooperation over time from one generation
to the next” (11-14). The explanation why political liberalism must be reliant
upon a democratic society is that within this society it has been existed
values and traditions which makes it possible to develop political liberalism.
“In a democratic society”, Rawls finds, “there is a tradition of democratic
thought, the content of which is at least familiar and intelligible to educated
common sense of citizens generally”. Furthermore, “society’s main institutions,
and their accepted forms of interpretation, are seen as a fund of implicitly
shared ideas and principles” (14).
Again it
is to be kept in mind that the aim of establishing the political conception of
justice is to find a basis for political discussion and that this basis must be
independent of wider comprehensive doctrines even though it is part of and
derived from that doctrine. Therefore it is to be constructed by and for the
citizens who are engaging in the social cooperation. In doing so, it is
necessary to abstract “by looking to public culture itself as a shared fund of
implicitly recognized basic ideas and principles.” Then we work “to formulate
these ideas clearly enough to be combined into a political conception of
justice congenial to citizen’s most firmly held conviction” (8). In order that
the political conception of justice is to be accepted, it must accord with the
considered convictions in all levels of generality. To this approach Rawls
calls “the pursuit of reflective equilibrium” (Rawls 1993, 8). When we find a
conception of political justice in condition of which democratic citizens
achieve reflective equilibrium, then we have reached a reasonable public basis
of justification of fundamental political questions (xix).
Having
discussed the way to establish ideas of political justice, Rawls goes on to
explain the ideas of society and person. The fundamental idea of society is
“that of a fair system of cooperation over time from one generation to the
next” (Rawls 1993, 14). That is cooperation involving “the idea of fair terms
of cooperation” or “terms that each
participant may reasonably accept, provided that everyone else likewise accepts
them” (16). While “[t]he fundamental idea of person” is that of “citizens as free and equal” (19). That
citizens are free means that they have two “moral powers” namely “a capacity
for sense of right and justice” that is “to honor fair terms of cooperation”
(302), and a “capacity to form, to revise and rationally to pursue” a
conception of good (19). Then citizens are equal if they have “these powers to
the requisite minimum degree to be fully cooperating members of society” (19).
In political liberalism the ideas of society
and person are quite important. As many times Rawls insists, this is only a
matter of politics and not anything else, meaning that the political conception
is to be free from other conceptions and to be produced only by the free and
equal persons in their cooperation with others in a democratic society. Thus
the case is limited only to “how citizens are to think of themselves and of one
another in their political and social relationship as specified by the basic
structure” (300).
The
two moral powers, which possessed by each person mentioned above, are closely
related to the ideas of “reasonable” and “rational.” These two concepts are
different, which means that “the reasonable and the rational are taken as two
distinct and independent basic ideas,” in the sense that “there is no thought
of deriving one from the other” (51). A person is considered as reasonable if he
or she has the capacity “to engage in fair cooperation as such, and to do so on
terms that others as equals might reasonably be expected to endorse” (51). In
another word the capacity to be reasonable means the capacity for a sense of
justice. In contrast, “the rational … applies to a single, unified agent
(either an individual or cooperative person) with the powers of judgment and
deliberation in seeking ends and interests peculiarly its own” (50). Thus the
capacity to be rational is identical with the capacity to form and pursue a
conception of the good. That these two “basic ideas” are independent, means
that “merely reasonable agents would have no ends of their own they wanted to
advance by fair cooperation” while “merely rational agents lack of a sense of
justice and fail to recognize the independent validity of the claim of others”
(52). The reasonable persons accept terms and principles of justice even though
they are incompatible with their own ends or with their compatible
comprehensive doctrine. Moreover the reasonable persons are willing “to
recognize the burdens of judgment and accept their consequences for the use of
public reason in directing the legitimate exercise of political power in
constitutional regime” (54). While the rational persons might be doing the
opposite of what which the reasonable person have done.
If
political liberalism seeks the reasonable terms of cooperation, how, then
citizens and their representatives are working to achieve the justified
conception of justice as the realization of the reasonable terms of the
cooperation on the condition that they are under the “veil of ignorance” (27).
To achieve the publicly justified conception of justice with the
above-mentioned condition, Rawls suggests using “the idea of original position”
(26). This idea is “a device that serves as means of public reflection and
self-clarification” (26). Again we should remember that Rawls always insists
that his political conception of justice must be freestanding or independent of
any comprehensive doctrines. Therefore Rawls proposes that the device of
“original position” be aimed at identifying “the reasonable point of view”
concerning the principle of justice. How we do it, he says “we can, as it were,
enter this position at any time simply by reasoning for principle of justice in
accordance with the enumerated restrictions on information” (27).
Armed with such devices and
situated in a democratic culture, citizen will agree to adopt two principles of
justice as follow:
a.
Each person has an equal claim
to fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is
compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political
liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.
b.
Social economic inequalities are
to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and
offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and
second, they are to be the greatest benefit of the least advantage member of
society (Rawls 1993, 5-6).
As has
been noticed, the second stage of political liberalism is to think about the
possibility that these principles may establish and preserve the stability in a
society characterized with the incompatible pluralism. Rawls maintains the idea
that to achieve stability is to satisfy two conditions. The first is “whether
peoples who grow under just institutions (as political conception defines them)
acquire a normally sufficient sense of justice so that they generally comply
with those institutions”. And the second is “whether in view the general facts
that characterize a democracy’s public political culture, and in particular the
fact of reasonable pluralism, the political conception of justice can be the
focus of overlapping consensus” (141). Thus in political liberalism relating to
the second condition of stability, the problem is to be solved by the way that
a political conception of justice “can gain the support of an overlapping
consensus of reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines in a
society regulated by it” (10). The stable democratic society, then, is one
those freestanding principles of justice are supported both by the common
“public basis of justification” in political culture and by diverse “nonpublic
bases of justification belonging to the many comprehensive doctrines and
acceptable only to those who affirm them” (xix).
As a
“model case for overlapping consensus,” Rawls mentions the way three views come
into agreement. Those views are, first “a religious doctrine that leads to a
principle of toleration, and underwrites the fundamental liberties of a
constitutional regime;” second “a comprehensive liberal moral doctrine such as
those of Kant or Mill;” and third “a pluralist view that includes independent
liberal principles of justice and a large family of non political values.” All
three views may “lead to roughly the same political judgments and thus overlap
on political conception” and they therefore “form a consensus of reasonable
doctrines” (144-145).
The
overlapping consensus differs from a “mere modus vivendi” because it has a
moral ground. Since that the overlapping consensus has a moral ground, it makes
it possible that the society is stable while a mere modus vivendi cannot. The
latter depends on “happenstance and balance of relative power” and consequently
it is possible for the party to break the agreement if the condition allows
them to do so. In contrast, through the overlapping consensus the society “is
stable with respect to the changes in distribution of power among views.” Thus
Rawls guarantees that each of party will continue to support the political
conception as far as it is affirmed on moral ground (148).