Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

58Chapter 2all parties, and hence can be accepted as right or just in thenormative sense.25At this first stage of the normative justification of his model of thewell-ordered society-whose features are "liberal" according toAnglo-American usage and "social democratic" from a Europeanviewpoint-Rawls already attends to the problem of self-stabilization.In section 86 of A Theory of justice, he takes pains to demonstratethe "congruence of the right and the good." The parties thatagree ( einigen) in the original position on reasonable principles areartificial entities, that is, constructs; they must not be identifiedwith flesh-and-blood citizens who would live under the real conditionsof a society erected on principles of justice. They also are notidentical with the reasonable citizens presupposed in the theory,whom one also expects to act morally and thus to subordinate theirpersonal interests to the obligations of a loyal citizen. The sense ofjustice may ground the desire to act justly, but this is not anautomatically effective motivation like, for example, the desire toavoid pain. For this reason, Rawls relies on a "thin theory of thegood" to show that just institutions would create circumstancesunder which it would lie in each one's well-considered interest topursue one's own freely chosen life plans under the same conditionsthat also allow other persons to pursue their life plans. In awell-ordered society, it would also always be good for me to satisfythe requirements of justice. Or in Hegel's words, the individual'smorality (Moralitiit) would find its ethical (sittliche) context in theinstitutions of a just society. The self-stabilization of a well-orderedsociety is therefore based not on the coercive force oflaw but on thesocializing force of a life under just institutions, for such a lifesimultaneously develops and reinforces the citizens' dispositions tojustice.Of course, all this holds only on the assumption that just institutionsalready exist. It is another question how these can be establishedor at least promoted in present circumstances. For aphilosophical theory of justice, this question does not pose itselffrom a pragmatic point of view. Rather, it first arises in reflectionon the political-cultural conditions of the value pluralism underwhich the theory of justice should meet with a favorable responsein the contemporary public of citizens. At this second stage of