Rawls on political community and principles of justice

✍ Scribed by James W. Nickel

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 602 KB
• Volume: 9
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0167-5249
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00142834

✦ Synopsis

Rawls's attempt to develop a notion of political community compatible with his style of liberalism has not received much attention. In several recent essays, but particularly in 'The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus'] RaMs has developed an account of political community -which he calls social unity -that suggests that political community can and should exist in democracies by having general acceptance by the population of a certain conception of justice. 2 Like strong communitarians, Rawls understands political community in terms of a consensus on certain normative principles. In this paper I explicate and criticize Rawts's theory of political community. I present three criticisms of Rawls's views.

Social unity exists, according to RaMs, when there is an overlapping consensus on a political conception of justice. A "political conception i The following essays by RaMs are relevant: 'Social Unity and Primary Goods',