166 - The priority of the right over the good

Summary

For Rawls, the priority of right signifies the ways in which justice as fairness (as a conception of right) constrains and regulates how ideas of the good are integrated into justice. He describes two meanings of the priority of right over the good, one general and one particular (PL 209). Each will be described in turn.

In its general meaning, the priority of right requires that any ideas of the good used in justice as fairness be political ideas. No specific, comprehensive or partial conceptions of the good can be relied upon in the conception of justice. In order to be political in the relevant way, a conception of justice must be capable of commanding an overlapping consensus. Thus, any ideas of the good that are used in justice as fairness must be capable of being endorsed from multiple points of view. Rawls identifies five such ideas of the good contained within justice as fairness (PL 176–206, CP 451–470): (1) goodness as rationality, (2) social primary goods as representing a “thin” theory of the good, (3) the idea of permissible comprehensive conceptions of the good, (4) the political virtues expected of citizens, and (5) the good of political society. In the discussion of these five goods that follows, it should become clear that Rawls thinks of the right and the good as complementary. Justice (as part of the right) puts certain limitations on the good, but depends upon political ideas of the good in order to be fully formulated.