41 - Congruence

Summary

The argument for the congruence of justice and the good plays a central role in Rawls’s argument for the stability of justice as fairness, and is crucial to understanding the evolution of his thinking. This entry will explain what congruence is, why it matters, and why we should think that justice as fairness is (more) congruent (than utilitarianism). It will also explain the controversy about whether the argument from congruence is necessary, and how Rawls’s dissatisfaction with his case for congruence eventually led him to the ideas of political liberalism and overlapping consensus.

The general question of congruence is whether being a good person is a good thing for that person (TJ 349). In many situations, the answer is of course “no,” since when faced with serious wrongdoing a commitment to moral principle may require personal sacriice, even to the point of laying down one’s life. Over a range of more favorable conditions, however, it is possible that the personal costs of being a good person are outweighed (in expectation) by the benefits. Rawls posed the question of congruence with respect to justice. Whether or not it is good for me to be just depends on what the conception of justice in question demands of me, in the range of conditions under consideration, and on which conception of the good we are using to evaluate the desirability of having a sense of justice, so speciied. Rawls argued that justice as fairness was congruent with what he called the thin theory of the good, or in any case more congruent than was utilitarianism, justice as fairness’smain rival. In a society well-ordered by justice as fairness, it would be good to have a sense of justice, whereas the greater demandingness of utilitarianism might make it fail the congruence test (TJ 501-502).