132 - Mixed conceptions of justice

Summary

Rawls calls a conception of justice a mixed conception when it combines his first principle, the principle of equal liberties, with a principle of distributive justice other than his second principle, such as average utility (TJ 107 and §49).

Mixed conceptions help clarify the justification of principles from the original position. Introduced briefly in TJ, the argument involving mixed conceptions is emphasized in the revised edition. In the preface to the 1999 edition, Rawls expresses regrets not to have presented the argument from the original position for the two principles of justice by way of a comparison with a mixed conception:

It would have been better to present [the argument] in terms of two comparisons. In the first parties would decide between the two principles of justice, taken as a unit, and the principle of (average) utility as the sole principle of justice. In the second comparison, the parties would decide between the two principles of justice and those same principles but for one important change: the principle of (average) utility is substituted for the difference principle. (The two principles after this substitution I called a mixed conception, and here it is understood that the principle of utility is to be applied subject to the constraints of the prior principles: the principle of the equal liberties and the principle of fair equality of opportunity.) (TJ xiv, emphasis added)