SEEU Review vol. 5 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

SEEU Review Volume 5, No. 2, 2009
conditions, to be used in criticizing the arrangement of their common
affairs” (Rawls, 1999, 57). Rawls believes that his imagined circumstances is
an answer to common objection to the theory of social contract as it is based
on fiction since they are based actual persons and their relations formed
within practices (Rawls, 1999, 58-9).
Before introducing these principles, it is said that certain institutional
forms are more appropriate to satisfy the values of liberty and equality for
citizens, who are regarded as “having the requisite powers of moral
personality that enable them to participate in society viewed as a system of
fair cooperation for mutual advantage” (Rawls, 1999, 392). Emphasis that is
put on the citizenry, publicity, moral powers and participation points to a
Rawls as a political liberal, which I can suggest as being a liberalism sine
quo non of which is no longer market liberalism. Therefore, the question
becomes how political philosophy finds the most appropriate institutional
forms for this political conception of justice. The most suitable solution is
“to narrow the range of public disagreement”. For this purpose, some
“settled convictions” can be collected. The “religious toleration” and
“rejection of slavery” are the examples of settled convictions. The basic idea
that is implicit in them can then be used to organize a coherent conception of
justice. In the public sphere, “the shared fund of implicitly recognized basic
ideas and principles” can be looked for so that they would be “combined into
conception of political justice congenial to our most firmly held
convictions”. Political conception of justice must be compatible with our
considered conceptions, “at all levels of generality, on due reflection” or
“reflective equilibrium” (Rawls, 1999, 393).
The public base of political agreement, Rawls suggests, can only be
provided with the conception of justice that will reasonably shape in one
coherent view “the deeper bases of agreement embedded in the public
political culture of a constitutional regime and acceptable to its most firmly
held considered convictions” (Rawls, 1999, 394). Once this aim is achieved,
justification of justice as fairness is realised by the public recognition of
citizens. Rawls states that
“justification is addressed to others who disagree with us, and therefore it
must always proceed from some consensus, that is from premises that we
and others publicly recognize as true; or better, publicly recognized as
acceptable to us for the purpose of establishing a working agreement on the
fundamental questions of political justice” (Rawls, 1999, 394).
It is seen that the political conception does not express itself as true, but
only as “a basis of informed and willing political agreement between
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