John Rawls and the Practical Task of Political Philosophy
Author: I-chung Chen
Abstract / Chinese PDF Download
Rawls’s transition from ‘justice as fairness’ to ‘political liberalism’ has aroused intense controversy over the nature of the Rawlsian project. This article takes up this contentious issue and aims to place Rawls’s ‘political turn’ in a light quite different from the various dominant readings. It argues that the ‘practical task’ of political liberalism consists principally in working out the most ‘stable’ public conception of justice, one, that is, which is most capable of stabilizing the constitutional regime. Towards this end, Rawls has decided to leave behind the three egalitarian elements of justice as fairness – namely, the fair value of political liberties, fair equal opportunity, and the difference principle – for the reason that these egalitarian principles have become too controversial to be stable. Justice as fairness is to be replaced with a more stable conception, that is, a minimum yet reasonable liberal conception of justice covering the constitutional essentials and, with it, the idea of public reason. Political liberalism is no more than a logical working out of Rawls’s minimum yet reasonable liberal conception of justice. And if this is the price that Rawls has to pay for his obsession with stability, he has paid it with great willingness and philosophical sophistication. Through a critical examination of Rawls’s arguments, this article aims to highlight the irreducibly ‘political’ character of political liberalism. It suggests that the latter should best be understood as a species of ‘justice as stability’, in which the stability of the constitutional regime has become an absolute priority.