Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-19T14:42:48.882Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Stability and the original position from Theory to Political Liberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2015

Paul Weithman
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
Timothy Hinton
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
Get access

Summary

A conception of justice is stable when members of a society adhere to it over time, so that their basic institutions remain in conformity with its principles of justice. Since Rawls argued that justice as fairness “generates its own supportive moral attitudes” (TJ, p. 350), his conception of justice would be self-stabilizing. He seems to suggest at one point that the part of his conception that would do the self-stabilizing is his principles of justice (TJ, p. 119). In this chapter, I shall argue that it is illuminating to think of stability as effected, not by Rawls's principles, but by the agreement upon them. More precisely, it is illuminating to read Rawls as arguing that justice as fairness would stabilize itself because the agreement reached in the original position is a special kind of what is sometimes called a “self-enforcing agreement.”

One advantage of this reading, as we shall see in section 11.6, is that it offers a clear and economical way of understanding what it is for a conception to be self-stabilizing. Rawls averred that self-stabilization tells strongly in a conception's favor, but he does not say why (TJ, p. 154). The interpretation offered here suggests an answer to that question. Another advantage, which we shall see in section 11.7, is that it offers a precise understanding of Rawls's transition to political liberalism. Rawls said he made the turn to political liberalism because he came to think that the stability arguments of TJ failed. My reading explains that failure as the failure of the agreement reached in the original position to satisfy two of the conditions of self-enforcement. This reading also helps us understand the account of stability Rawls offered in PL by displaying new conditions of self-enforcement and by showing how the later Rawls could maintain that the agreement reached in the original position satisfied them. Finally, we shall see in section 11.8 that because this reading highlights the importance of the original position in Rawls's treatments of stability, it helps to answer the much-controverted question of whether the original position is essential to Rawls's theory. It does so by identifying a crucial premise in both his accounts of stability that depends upon his reasons for devising it.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Original Position , pp. 224 - 246
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×