The Justification of Justice as Fairness: A Two Stage Process

The tragic truth about philosophy is that misunderstanding occurs more frequently than understanding. Nowhere is this more evident than in the reception of Rawls' work. A common misinterpretation of his conception of justice as fairness is that it is an application of Kantian moral theory to the political structure of society. Viewed in this light, Rawls' theory seems to be open to a serious objection. One could argue that as a Kantian moral theory justice as fairness is too controversial to generate the consensus necessary for contractual agreement. It is controversial because it violates the most fundamental liberal requirement: that the state remain neutral in regard to competing conceptions of the good.1 A critic who pressed this line of argument could then go on to argue that any attempt to weaken the moral claims of justice as fairness in order to mitigate the controversy, would only undermine the capacity of justice as fairness to generate support for itself. The supposed strength of this objection is that it reveals that what is problematic in Rawls' theory is only symptomatic of the problems faced by liberal political conceptions in general.