Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

Rawls begins by reviewing four ways for political philosophy to influence society. The first is that during times of profound political disagreement, philosophy may either provide common ground or identify fundamental points of difference. For example, the fight over ratifying the US Constitution led to philosophical inquiry that in some respects helped to shape the nature of the American Republic, while also revealing how the issue of slavery was rooted in opposing conceptions of who deserved the rights of citizenship. Some of these differences reflect competing material interests, while others derive from vastly different worldviews. The second is to provide a deeper understanding of where a certain people and social order originated, what principles hold them together, and where they stand in relation to the outside world. The third is to ascribe meaning to feelings of alienation, where citizens believe that they do not fit into the social order or that the social order is designed to put them at a disadvantage. The German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel famously sought to identify a point at which the conflicting forces of history would synthesize with one another, revealing the rational design behind what might appear to be meaningless chaos. Rawls is less concerned with this particular role for philosophy, as it mainly relates to a community with an imagined common destiny, while his definition of a pluralistic, democratic society forbids any singular view of history from predominating.