1.

Four Roles of Political Philosophy

1.1. We begin by distinguishing four roles that political philosophy

may have as part of a society's public political culture. Consider first
its practical role arising from divisive political conflict and the need
to settle the problem of order.

There are long periods in the history of any society during which
certain basic questions lead to deep and sharp conflict and it seems
difficult if not impossible to find any reasoned common ground for
political agreement. To illustrate, one historical origin of liberalism is
the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
following the Reformation; these divisions opened a long
controversy about the right of resistance and liberty of conscience,
which eventually led to the formulation and often reluctant
acceptance of some form of the principle of toleration. The views in
Locke's Letter on Toleration (1689) and Montesquieu's The Spirit of
Laws (1748) have a long prehistory. Hobbes's Leviathan (1652) surely
the greatest work of political philosophy in English is concerned with
the problem of order during the turmoil of the English civil war; and
so also is Locke's Second Treatise (also 1689). To illustrate in our own
case how divisive conflict may lead to political philosophy, recall the
extensive debates between Federalists and Anti-Federalists in 1787-
88 over ratification of the Constitution, and how the question of the
extension of slavery in the years before the Civil War called forth
fundamental discussions of that institution and of the nature of the
union between the states. We suppose, then, that one task of
political philosophy-its practical role, let's say is to focus on deeply
disputed questions and to see whether, despite appearances, some
underlying basis of philosophical and moral agreement can be
uncovered. Or if such a basis of agreement cannot be found, perhaps
the divergence of philosophical and moral opinion at the root of
divisive political differences can at least be narrowed so that social
cooperation on a footing of mutual respect among citizens can still
be maintained. To fix ideas, consider the conflict between the claims
of liberty and the claims of equality in the tradition of democratic
thought. Debates over the last two centuries or so make plain that
there is no public agreement on how basic institutions are to be
arranged so as to be most appropriate to the freedom and equality of
democratic citizenship. There is a divide between the tradition
derived from Locke, which stresses what Constant called "the
liberties of the moderns" freedom of thought and liberty of
conscience, certain basic rights of the person and of property, and
the rule of law-and the tradition derived from Rousseau, which
stresses what Constant called "the liberties of the ancients" the
equal political liberties and the values of public life. This overstylized
contrast brings out the depth of the conflict.

This conflict is rooted not only in differences of social and economic

interests but also in differences between general political, economic,
and social theories about how institutions work, as well as in
different views about the probable consequences of public policies.
Here we focus on another root of the conflict: the different
philosophical and moral doctrines that deal with how the competing
claims of liberty and equality are to be under- stood, how they are to
be ordered and weighed against each other, and how any particular
way of ordering them is to be justified.

1.2. I note briefly three other roles of political philosophy which we

con- sider further as we proceed. One is that political philosophy
may contribute to how a people think of their political and social
institutions as a whole, and their basic aims and purposes as a
society with a history-a nation-as opposed to their aims and
purposes as individuals, or as members of families and associations.
Moreover, the members of any civilized society need a conception
that enables them to understand themselves as members having a
certain political status in a democracy, that of equal citizenship- and
how this status affects their relation to their social world.
This need political philosophy may try to answer, and this role I call
that of orientation. The idea is that it belongs to reason and
reflection (both theoretical and practical) to orient us in the
(conceptual) space, say, of all possible ends, individual and
associational, political and social. Political philosophy, as a work of
reason, does this by specifying principles to identify reasonable and
rational ends of those various kinds, and by showing how those ends
can cohere within a well-articulated conception of a just and
reasonable society. Such a conception may offer a unified framework
within which proposed answers to divisive questions can be made
consistent and the insights gained from different kinds of cases can
be brought to bear on one another and extended to other cases.

1.3. A third role, stressed by Hegel in his Philosophy of Right (1821), is

that of reconciliation: political philosophy may try to calm our
frustration and rage against our society and its history by showing us
the way in which its institutions, when properly understood from a
philosophical point of view, are rational, and developed over time as
they did to attain their present, rational form. This fits one of Hegel's
well-known sayings: "When we look at the world rationally, the world
looks rationally back." He seeks for us reconciliation- Versöhnung-
that is, we are to accept and affirm our social world positively, not
merely to be resigned to it.

We shall be concerned with this role of political philosophy in several

respects. Thus I believe that a democratic society is not and cannot
be a community, where by a community I mean a body of persons
united in affirming the same comprehensive, or partially
comprehensive, doctrine. The fact of reasonable pluralism which
characterises a society with free institutions makes this impossible.
This is the fact of profound and irreconcilable differences in citizens'
reasonable comprehensive religious and philosophical conceptions
of the world, and in their views of the moral and aesthetic values to
be sought in human life. But this fact is not always easy to accept,
and political philosophy may try to reconcile us to it by showing us
the rea son and indeed the political good and benefits of it.

Again, political society is not, and cannot be, an association. We do

not enter it voluntarily. Rather we simply find ourselves in a
particular political society at a certain moment of historical time. We
might think our presence in it, our being here, is not free. In what
sense, then, can citizens of a democracy be free? Or as we shall ask
eventually, what is the outer limit of our freedom (§26)?

One can try to deal with this question by viewing political society in a
certain way, namely, as a fair system of cooperation over time from
one generation to the next, where those engaged in cooperation are
viewed as free and equal citizens and normal cooperating members
of society over a complete life. We then try to formulate principles of
political justice such that if the basic structure of society-the main
political and social institutions and the way they fit together as one
scheme of cooperation-satisfies those principles, then we can say
without pretense and fakery that citizens are indeed free and equal.

1.4. The fourth role is a variation of the previous one. We view

political philosophy as realistically utopian: that is, as probing the
limits of practicable political possibility. Our hope for the future of
our society rests on the belief that the social world allows at least a
decent political order, so that a reasonably just, though not perfect,
democratic regime is possible. So we ask: What would a just
democratic society be like under reasonably favourable but still
possible historical conditions, conditions allowed by the laws and
tendencies of the social world? What ideals and principles would
such a society try to realise given the circumstances of justice in a
democratic culture as we know them? These circumstances include
the fact of reasonable pluralism. This condition is permanent as it
persists indefinitely under free democratic institutions.

The fact of reasonable pluralism limits what is practicably possible

under the conditions of our social world, as opposed to conditions in
other historical ages when people are often said to have been united
(though per- haps they never have been) in affirming one
comprehensive conception. 2. A Fair System of Cooperation

Eventually we want to ask whether the fact of reasonable pluralism is

a historical fate we should lament. To show that it is not, or that it
has its very considerable benefits, would be to reconcile us in part to
our condition. Of course, there is a question about how the limits of
the practicable are discerned and what the conditions of our social
world in fact are; the problem here is that the limits of the possible
are not given by the actual, for we can to a greater or lesser extent
change political and social institutions, and much else. However, I
shall not pursue this deep question here.

§2. Society as a Fair System of Cooperation

2.1. As I said above, one practicable aim of justice as fairness is to

pro- vide an acceptable philosophical and moral basis for democratic
institutions and thus to address the question of how the claims of
liberty and equality are to be understood. To this end we look to the
public political culture of a democratic society, and to the traditions
of interpretation of its constitution and basic laws, for certain
familiar ideas that can be worked up into a conception of political
justice. It is assumed that citizens in a democratic society have at
least an implicit understanding of these ideas as shown in everyday
political discussion, in debates about the meaning and ground of
constitutional rights and liberties, and the like.

Some of these familiar ideas are more basic than others. Those we
use to organise and to give structure to justice as fairness as a whole
I count as fundamental ideas. The most fundamental idea in this
conception of justice is the idea of society as a fair system of social
cooperation over time from one generation to the next (Theory, §1:
4). We use this idea as the central organizing idea in trying to develop
a political conception of justice for a democratic regime.

This central idea is worked out in conjunction with two companion

fundamental ideas. These are: the idea of citizens (those engaged in
cooperation) as free and equal persons (§7); and the idea of a well-
ordered society, that is, a society effectively regulated by a public
conception of justice (§3).

As indicated above, these fundamental intuitive ideas are viewed as

being familiar from the public political culture of a democratic
society. Even though such ideas are not often expressly formulated,
nor their meanings clearly marked out, they may play a fundamental
role in society's political thought and in how its institutions are
interpreted, for example, by courts and in historical or other texts
regarded as being of enduring significance. That a democratic society
is often viewed as a system of social cooperation is suggested by the
fact that from a political point of view, and in the con- text of the
public discussion of basic questions of political right, its citizens do
not regard their social order as a fixed natural order, or as an
institutional structure justified by religious doctrines or hierarchical
principles ex- pressing aristocratic values. Nor do they think a
political party may properly, as a matter of its declared program,
work to deny any recognized class or group its basic rights and
liberties.

2.2. The central organizing idea of social cooperation has at least

three essential features:

(a) Social cooperation is distinct from merely socially coordinated

activity-for example, activity coordinated by orders issued by an ab-
solute central authority. Rather, social cooperation is guided by
publicly recognised rules and procedures which those cooperating
accept as appropriate to regulate their conduct.

(b) The idea of cooperation includes the idea of fair terms of

coopera- tion: these are terms each participant may reasonably
accept, and sometimes should accept, provided that everyone else
likewise ac- cepts them. Fair terms of cooperation specify an idea of
reciprocity, or mutuality: all who do their part as the recognized rules
require are to benefit as specified by a public and agreed-upon
standard.

(c) The idea of cooperation also includes the idea of each

participant's rational advantage, or good. The idea of rational
advantage specifies what it is that those engaged in cooperation are
seeking to advance from the standpoint of their own good.
Throughout I shall make a distinction between the reasonable and
the rational, as I shall refer to them. These are basic and
complementary ideas entering into the fundamental idea of society
as a fair system of social coop- eration. As applied to the simplest
case, namely to persons engaged in co- operation and situated as
equals in relevant respects (or symmetrically, for short), reasonable
persons are ready to propose, or to acknowledge when 2. A Fair
System of Cooperation

proposed by others, the principles needed to specify what can be

seen by all as fair terms of cooperation. Reasonable persons also
understand that they are to honor these principles, even at the
expense of their own inter- ests as circumstances may require,
provided others likewise may be ex- pected to honor them. It is
unreasonable not to be ready to propose such principles, or not to
honor fair terms of cooperation that others may rea- sonably be
expected to accept; it is worse than unreasonable if one merely
seems, or pretends, to propose or honor them but is ready to violate
them to one's advantage as the occasion permits.

Yet while it is unreasonable, it is not, in general, not rational. For it

may be that some have a superior political power or are placed in
more fortu- nate circumstances; and though these conditions are
irrelevant, let us as- sume, in distinguishing between the persons in
question as equals, it may be rational for those so placed to take
advantage of their situation. In ev- eryday life we imply this
distinction, as when we say of certain people that, given their
superior bargaining position, their proposal is perfectly rational, but
unreasonable all the same. Common sense views the reasonable but
not, in general, the rational as a moral idea involving moral
sensibility.

2.3. The role of the principles of justice (as part of a political

conception of justice) is to specify the fair terms of social
cooperation (Theory, §1). These principles specify the basic rights
and duties to be assigned by the main political and social
institutions, and they regulate the division of bene- fits arising from
social cooperation and allot the burdens necessary to sus- tain it.
Since in a democratic society citizens are regarded from the point of
view of the political conception as free and equal persons, the
principles of a democratic conception of justice may be viewed as
specifying the fair terms of cooperation between citizens so
conceived.

By way of these specifications, the principles of justice provide a re-

sponse to the fundamental question of political philosophy for a
constitu- tional democratic regime. That question is: what is the most
acceptable political conception of justice for specifying the fair
terms of cooperation between citizens regarded as free and equal
and as both reasonable and ra- tional, and (we add) as normal and
fully cooperating members of society over a complete life, from one
generation to the next? This question is fun- damental because it has
been the focus of the liberal critique of monarchy and aristocracy
and of the socialist critique of liberal constitutional democ- racy. It is
also the focus of the present conflict between liberalism and con-
servative views over the claims of private property and the
legitimacy (as opposed to the effectiveness) of social policies
associated with the so-called welfare state.7
In using the conception of citizens as free and equal persons we
abstract from various features of the social world and idealize in
certain ways. This brings out one role of abstract conceptions: they
are used to gain a clear and uncluttered view of a question seen as
fundamental by focusing on the more significant elements that we
think are most relevant in determining its most appropriate answer.
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, we do not try to answer any
question except the fundamental question stated above.

§3. The Idea of a Well-Ordered Society

3.1. As stated in §2.1, the fundamental idea of a well-ordered society-

a society effectively regulated by a public conception of justice is a
compan- ion idea used to specify the central organizing idea of
society as a fair sys- tem of cooperation. Now to say that a political
society is well ordered con- veys three things:

First, and implied by the idea of a public conception of justice, it is a

so- ciety in which everyone accepts, and knows that everyone else
accepts, the very same political conception of justice (and so the
same principles of po- litical justice). Moreover, this knowledge is
mutually recognized: that is, people know everything they would
know if their acceptance of those prin- ciples were a matter of public
agreement.

Second, and implied by the idea of effective regulation by a public

con- ception of justice, society's basic structure-that is, its main
political and social institutions and the way they hang together as
one system of cooperation-is publicly known, or with good reason
believed, to satisfy those prin- ciples of justice.
Third, and also implied by the idea of effective regulation, citizens
have a normally effective sense of justice, that is, one that enables
them to under- stand and apply the publicly recognized principles of
justice, and for the most part to act accordingly as their position in
society, with its duties and obligations, requires.

In a well-ordered society, then, the public conception of justice

provides a mutually recognized point of view from which citizens can
adjudicate their claims of political right on their political institutions
or against one another.

3.2. The idea of a well-ordered society is plainly a very considerable

ide- alization. One reason we form this idea is that an important
question about a conception of justice for a democratic society is
whether, and how well, it can serve as the publicly recognized and
mutually acknowledged concep- tion of justice when society is
viewed as a system of cooperation between free and equal citizens
from one generation to the next. A political concep- tion of justice
that could not fulfill this public role must be, it seems, in some way
seriously defective. The suitability of a conception of justice for a
well-ordered society provides an important criterion for comparing
politi- cal conceptions of justice. The idea of a well-ordered society
helps to for- mulate that criterion and to specify further the central
organizing idea of so- cial cooperation.

The idea of a well-ordered society has two meanings. Its general

mean- ing is given above in §3.1: a well-ordered society is a society
effectively regu- lated by some public (political) conception of
justice, whatever that concep- tion may be. But the idea has a
particular meaning when we refer to the well-ordered society of a
particular conception of justice, as when we say that all members of
society accept and know that all the others accept the same political
conception of justice, for example, a particular natural rights
doctrine, or a form of utilitarianism, or justice as fairness. Note that,
given the fact of reasonable pluralism, a well-ordered society in
which all its members accept the same comprehensive doctrine is
impossible. But dem- ocratic citizens holding different
comprehensive doctrines may agree on political conceptions of
justice. Political liberalism holds that this provides a sufficient as well
as the most reasonable basis of social unity available to us as citizens
of a democratic society. §4. The Idea of the Basic Structure

4.1. Another fundamental idea is the idea of the basic structure (of a
well- ordered society). This idea is introduced so as to formulate and
present justice as fairness as having an appropriate unity. Along with
the idea of the original position (§6), it is needed to complete other
ideas and to order them into a perspicuous whole. The idea of the
basic structure may be seen in that light.

As indicated above in §3, the basic structure of society is the way in

which the main political and social institutions of society fit together
into one system of social cooperation, and the way they assign basic
rights and duties and regulate the division of advantages that arises
from social coop- eration over time (Theory, §2: 6). The political
constitution with an inde- pendent judiciary, the legally recognized
forms of property, and the struc- ture of the economy (for example,
as a system of competitive markets with private property in the
means of production), as well as the family in some form, all belong
to the basic structure. The basic structure is the back- ground social
framework within which the activities of associations and in-
dividuals take place. A just basic structure secures what we may call
back- ground justice.
4.2. One main feature of justice as fairness is that it takes the basic
struc- ture as the primary subject of political justice (Theory, §2). It
does so in part because the effects of the basic structure on citizens'
aims, aspirations, and character, as well as on their opportunities and
their ability to take ad- vantage of them, are pervasive and present
from the beginning of life (§§15- 16). Our focus is almost entirely on
the basic structure as the subject of po- litical and social justice.

Since justice as fairness starts with the special case of the basic
structure, its principles regulate this structure and do not apply
directly to or regulate internally institutions and associations within
society. Firms and labor unions, churches, universities, and the
family are bound by constraints aris- ing from the principles of
justice, but these constraints arise indirectly from just background
institutions within which associations and groups exist, and by which
the conduct of their members is restricted. For example, while
churches can excommunicate heretics, they cannot burn them; this
constraint is to secure liberty of conscience. Universities cannot
discriminate in certain ways: this constraint is to help to establish
fair equality of opportunity. Parents (women equally with men) are
equal citizens and have equal basic rights including the right of
property; they must respect the rights of their children (which the
latter have as prospec- tive citizens) and cannot, for instance,
deprive them of essential medical care. Moreover, to establish
equality between men and women in sharing the work of society, in
preserving its culture and in reproducing itself over time, special
provisions are needed in family law (and no doubt elsewhere) so that
the burden of bearing, raising, and educating children does not fall
more heavily on women, thereby undermining their fair equality of
oppor- tunity.
One should not assume in advance that principles that are
reasonable and just for the basic structure are also reasonable and
just for institutions, associations, and social practices generally.
While the principles of justice as fairness impose limits on these
social arrangements within the basic structure, the basic structure
and the associations and social forms within it are each governed by
distinct principles in view of their different aims and purposes and
their peculiar nature and special requirements. Justice as fair- ness is
a political, not a general, conception of justice: it applies first to the
basic structure and sees these other questions of local justice and
also ques- tions of global justice (what I call the law of peoples) as
calling for separate consideration on their merits.

The principles of justice to be followed directly by associations and

institutions within the basic structure we may call principles of local
jus- tice. Altogether then we have three levels of justice, moving from
in- side outward: first, local justice (principles applying directly to
institu- tions and associations); second, domestic.justice (principles
applying to the basic structure of society); and finally, global justice
(principles apply- ing to international law). Justice as fairness starts
with domestic justice- the justice of the basic structure. From there it
works outward to the law of peoples and inward to local justice. The
law of peoples has been dis- cussed elsewhere. 10 No attempt will be
made here to deal systematically with local justice. In general,
principles for the basic structure constrain (or limit), but do not
determine uniquely, the suitable principles of local justice.

4.3. Note that our characterization of the basic structure does not
pro- vide a sharp definition, or criterion, from which we can tell what
social ar rangements, or aspects thereof, belong to it. Rather, we start
with a loose characterization of what is initially a rough idea. As
indicated above, we must specify the idea more exactly as seems
best after considering a variety of particular questions. With this
done, we then check how the more definite characterization coheres
with our considered convictions on due reflection.

The role of a political conception of justice, however, is not to say

exactly how these questions are to be settled, but to set out a
framework of thought within which they can be approached. Were we
to lay down a definition of the basic structure that draws sharp
boundaries, not only would we go be- yond what that rough idea
could reasonably contain but we would also risk wrongly prejudging
what more specific or future conditions may call for, thus making
justice as fairness unable to adjust to different social circum-
stances. For our judgments to be reasonable, they must usually be
informed by an awareness of those more specific circumstances."

Finally, to anticipate, since justice as fairness presents itself as a

possible focus of a reasonable overlapping consensus (§11), and
since the basic structure is the primary subject of justice, the
boundaries and aspects of this structure must eventually be drawn
and specified in ways that, if possi- ble, at least permit, if not
encourage, such a consensus. So generally stated, it is not evident
what this condition requires; but these matters we try to answer as
we take up a wider range of questions.

§5. Limits to Our Inquiry

5.1. Before discussing the other fundamental ideas of justice as

fairness, let us note some limits to our inquiry. The first limit, as has
been indicated, is that we must fix on the basic structure as the
primary subject of political justice and leave aside questions of local
justice. We view justice as fairness not as a comprehensive moral
doctrine but as a political conception to apply to that structure of
political and social institutions. The second limit is that we are
concerned for the most part with the na- ture and content of justice
for a well-ordered society. Discussion of this case is referred to in
justice as fairness as ideal, or strict compliance, theory. Strict
compliance means that (nearly) everyone strictly complies with, and
so abides by, the principles of justice. We ask in effect what a
perfectly just, or nearly just, constitutional regime might be like, and
whether it may come about and be made stable under the
circumstances of justice (Theory, §22), and so under realistic, though
reasonably favorable, coriditions. In this way, justice as fairness is
realistically utopian: it probes the limits of the realisti- cally
practicable, that is, how far in our world (given its laws and tenden-
cies) a democratic regime can attain complete realization of its
appropriate political values-democratic perfection, if you like.

We focus on ideal theory because the current conflict in democratic

thought is in good part a conflict about what conception of justice is
most appropriate for a democratic society under reasonably
favorable conditions. This is clear from what, for our purposes, we
called the fundamental ques- tion of political philosophy (§2.3).
Nevertheless, the idea of a well-ordered society should also provide
some guidance in thinking about nonideal the- ory, and so about
difficult cases of how to deal with existing injustices. It should also
help to clarify the goal of reform and to identify which wrongs are
more grievous and hence more urgent to correct.

A third limit to our inquiry, mentioned before, is that we shall not

here discuss the important question of the just relations between
peoples, nor how the extension of justice as fairness to these
relations illustrates the way in which it is suitably universal. I assume
Kant's view ("Perpetual Peace" (1795)) is correct and that a world
government would be either an oppres- sive global despotism or a
fragile empire torn by frequent civil wars as sepa- rate regions and
cultures tried to win their political autonomy." A just world order is
perhaps best seen as a society of peoples, each people main- taining
a well-ordered and decent political (domestic) regime, not necessar-
ily democratic but fully respecting basic human rights."

In justice as fairness the question of justice between peoples is post-

poned until we have an account of political justice for a well-ordered
demo- cratic society. Observe, though, that beginning with the
justice of the basic structure does not imply that we cannot revise
our account for a democratic society (domestic justice) in view of
what justice between peoples turns out to require. The two parts of a
more complete political conception-the jus- tice of domestic society
as well as of the relations between societies can be adjusted to each
other in the course of working them out.

5.2. Finally, I stress a point implicit in what we have said: namely, that
justice as fairness is not a comprehensive religious, philosophical, or
moral doctrine-one that applies to all subjects and covers all values.
Nor is it to be regarded as the application of such a doctrine to the
basic structure of society, as if this structure were merely another
subject to which that comprehensive view is to be applied. Neither
political philosophy nor jus- tice as fairness is, in that way, applied
moral philosophy. Political philoso- phy has its own distinctive
features and problems. Justice as fairness is a political conception of
justice for the special case of the basic structure of a modern
democratic society. In this respect it is much narrower in scope than
comprehensive philosophical moral doctrines such as utilitarianism,
perfectionism, and intuitionism, among others. It focuses on the
political (in the form of the basic structure), which is but a part of the
domain of the moral.

§6. The Idea of the Original Position

6.1. So far we have discussed three fundamental ideas introduced in

The- ory, §§1-2, the idea of a society as a fair system of cooperation
and the idea of a well-ordered society, and the idea of the basic
structure of society. Next we discuss two other fundamental ideas,
introduced in Theory, §§3-4. One is the idea of the original position;
the other is the idea of citizens as free and equal persons. The sixth
fundamental idea, that of public justification, is discussed in §§9-10.

Let us begin with how we might be led to the original position and the
reasons for using it. The following line of thought might lead us to it:
we start with the organizing idea of society as a fair system of
cooperation be- tween free and equal persons. Immediately the
question arises as to how the fair terms of cooperation are specified.
For example: Are they specified by an authority distinct from the
persons cooperating, say, by God's law? Or are these terms
recognized by everyone as fair by reference to a moral order of
values," say, by rational intuition, or by reference to what some have
viewed as "natural law"? Or are they settled by an agreement
reached by free and equal citizens engaged in cooperation, and made
in view of what they regard as their reciprocal advantage, or good?

Justice as fairness adopts a form of the last answer: the fair terms of
so- cial cooperation are to be given by an agreement entered into by
those en- gaged in it. One reason it does this is that, given the
assumption of reason- able pluralism, citizens cannot agree on any
moral authority, say a sacred text or a religious institution or
tradition. Nor can they agree about a moral order of values or the
dictates of what some view as natural law. So what better alternative
is there than an agreement between citizens themselves reached
under conditions that are fair for all?

6.2. Now this agreement, like any other, must be entered into under
cer- tain conditions if it is to be a valid agreement from the point of
view of po- litical justice. In particular, these conditions must situate
free and equal per- sons fairly and must not permit some to have
unfair bargaining advantages over others. Further, threats of force
and coercion, deception and fraud, and so on must be ruled out. So
far, so good. These considerations are fa- miliar from everyday life.
But agreements in everyday life are made in deter- minate situations
within the background institutions of the basic structure; and the
particular features of these situations affect the terms of the agree-
ments reached. Clearly, unless those situations satisfy the conditions
for valid and fair agreements, the terms agreed to will not be
regarded as fair.

Justice as fairness hopes to extend the idea of a fair agreement to

the ba- sic structure itself. Here we face a serious difficulty for any
political con- ception of justice that uses the idea of contract,
whether or not the con- tract is social. The difficulty is this: we must
specify a point of view from which a fair agreement between free and
equal persons can be reached; but this point of view must be
removed from and not distorted by the par- ticular features and
circumstances of the existing basic structure. The origi- nal position,
with the feature I have called the "veil of ignorance" (Theory, §24),
specifies this point of view. In the original position, the parties are
not allowed to know the social positions or the particular
comprehensive doctrines of the persons they represent. They also
do not know persons' race and ethnic group, sex, or various native
endowments such as strength and intelligence, all within the normal
range. We express these limits on in- formation figuratively by saying
the parties are behind a veil of ignorance. One reason why the
original position must abstract from the contingen- cies-the
particular features and circumstances of persons-within the ba sic
structure is that the conditions for a fair agreement between free
and equal persons on the first principles of justice for that structure
must elimi- nate the bargaining advantages that inevitably arise over
time within any so- ciety as a result of cumulative social and
historical tendencies. "To persons according to their threat
advantage" (or their de facto political power, or wealth, or native
endowments) is not the basis of political justice. Contin- gent
historical advantages and accidental influences from the past should
not affect an agreement on principles that are to regulate the basic
structure from the present into the future. 16

6.3. The idea of the original position is proposed, then, as the answer
to the question of how to extend the idea of a fair agreement to an
agreement on principles of political justice for the basic structure.
That position is set up as a situation that is fair to the parties as free
and equal, and as properly informed and rational. Thus any
agreement made by the parties as citizens' representatives is fair.
Since the content of the agreement concerns the prin- ciples of
justice for the basic structure, the agreement in the original posi-
tion specifies the fair terms of social cooperation between citizens
regarded as such persons. Hence the name: justice as fairness.

Observe that, as stated in Theory, the original position generalizes

the fa- miliar idea of the social contract (Theory, §3). It does so by
making the ob- ject of agreement the first principles of justice for the
basic structure, rather than a particular form of government, as in
Locke. The original position is also more abstract: the agreement
must be regarded as both hypothetical and nonhistorical.

(i) It is hypothetical, since we ask what the parties (as described)

could, or would, agree to, not what they have agreed to.

(ii) It is nonhistorical, since we do not suppose the agreement has

ever, or indeed ever could actually be entered into. And even if it
could, that would make no difference.

The second point (ii) means that what principles the parties would
agree to is to be decided by analysis. We characterize the original
position by var- ious stipulations-cach with its own reasoned
backing-so that the agree- ment that would be reached can be
worked out deductively by reasoning from how the parties are
situated and described, the alternatives open to them, and from
what the parties count as reasons and the information avail- able to
them. We return to this in Part III.

6.4. Here there may seem to be a serious objection: since hypotheti-

cal agreements are not binding at all, the agreement of the parties in
the original position would appear to be of no significance." In reply,
the significance of the original position lies in the fact that it is a
device of representation or, alternatively, a thought-experiment for
the purpose of public and self-clarification. We are to think of it as
modeling two things:

First, it models what we regard-here and now as fair conditions under

which the representatives of citizens, viewed solely as free and equal
per- sons, are to agree to the fair terms of cooperation whereby the
basic struc- ture is to be regulated.

Second, it models what we regard-here and now as acceptable

restric- tions on the reasons on the basis of which the parties,
situated in fair condi- tions, may properly put forward certain
principles of political justice and reject others.

Thus if the original position suitably models our convictions about

these two things (namely, fair conditions of agreement between
citizens as free and equal, and appropriate restrictions on reasons),
we conjecture that the principles of justice the parties would agree
to (could we properly work them out) would specify the terms of
cooperation that we regard-here and now-as fair and supported by
the best reasons. This is because, in that case, the original position
would have succeeded in modeling in a suitable manner what we
think on due reflection are the reasonable considerations to ground
the principles of a political conception of justice.

6.5. To illustrate regarding fair conditions: the parties are symmetri-

cally situated in the original position. This models our considered
convic- tion that in matters of basic political justice citizens are
equal in all rele- vant respects: that is, that they possess to a
sufficient degree the requisite powers of moral personality and the
other capacities that enable them to be normal and fully cooperating
members of society over a complete life (§7). Thus, in accordance
with the precept of formal equality that those equal (similar) in all
relevant respects are to be treated equally (similarly), citizens'
representatives are to be situated symmetrically in the original
position. Otherwise we would not think that position fair to citizens
as free and equal.
To illustrate regarding appropriate restrictions on reasons: if we are
rea- sonable, it is one of our considered convictions that the fact that
we occupy a particular social position, say, is not a good reason for us
to accept, or to expect others to accept, a conception of justice that
favors those in that po- sition. If we are wealthy, or poor, we do not
expect everyone else to accept a basic structure favoring the
wealthy, or the poor, simply for that reason. To model this and other
similar convictions, we do not let the parties know the social position
of the persons they represent. The same idea is extended to other
features of persons by the veil of ignorance.

In short, the original position is to be understood as a device of

repre- sentation. As such it models our considered convictions as
reasonable per- sons by describing the parties (each of whom is
responsible for the funda- mental interests of a free and equal
citizen) as fairly situated and as reaching an agreement subject to
appropriate restrictions on reasons for favoring principles of
political justice.

§7. The Idea of Free and Equal Persons

7.1. To this point we have simply used the idea of free and equal
persons; we must now explain its meaning and role. Justice as
fairness regards citi- zens as engaged in social cooperation, and
hence as fully capable of doing so, and this over a complete life.
Persons so regarded have what we may call "the two moral powers,"
explained as follows:
(i) One such power is the capacity for a sense of justice: it is the
capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from (and not merely in
accordance with) the principles of political justice that specify the
fair terms of social cooperation.

(ii) The other moral power is a capacity for a conception of the good:
it is the capacity to have, to revise, and rationally to pursue a
conception of the good. Such a conception is an ordered family of
final ends and aims which specifies a person's conception of what is
of value in human life or, alternatively, of what is regarded as a fully
worthwhile life. The elements of such a conception are normally set
within, and interpreted by, certain com- prehensive religious,
philosophical, or moral doctrines in the light of which the various
ends and aims are ordered and understood.

7.2. In saying that persons are regarded as having the two moral pow-
ers, we are saying that they have the requisite capacities not only to
en- gage in mutually beneficial social cooperation over a complete
life but also to be moved to honor its fair terms for their own sake. In
Theory, these two powers are taken as defining "moral persons" and
"moral personality" (Theory, §§3-4). What is meant, though, by saying
that persons are free and equal?

Here it is important to keep in mind that justice as fairness is a

political conception of justice: that is, it is designed for the special
case of the basic structure of society and is not intended as a
comprehensive moral doctrine. Therefore, the idea of the person,
when specified into a conception of the person, belongs to a political
conception. (A fundamental idea becomes a conception if we specify
its elements in a particular way.) This means that the conception of
the person is not taken from metaphysics or the philoso- phy of
mind, or from psychology; it may have little relation to conceptions
of the self discussed in those disciplines. It must of course be
compatible with (one or more) such philosophical or psychological
conceptions (so far as they are sound), but that is another story. The
conception of the person itself is meant as both normative and
political, not metaphysical or psycho- logical.

As noted earlier (§2.1-2), the conception of the person is worked up

from the way citizens are regarded in the public political culture of a
demo- cratic society, in its basic political texts (constitutions and
declarations of human rights), and in the historical tradition of the
interpretation of those texts. For these interpretations we look not
only to courts, political parties, and statesmen, but also to writers on
constitutional law and jurisprudence, and to the more enduring
writings of all kinds that bear on a society's polit- ical philosophy.

7.3. In what sense are citizens regarded as equal persons? Let's say
they are regarded as equal in that they are all regarded as having to
the essential minimum degree the moral powers necessary to engage
in social coopera- tion over a complete life and to take part in society
as equal citizens. Having these powers to this degree we take as the
basis of equality among citizens as persons (Theory, §77): that is,
since we view society as a fair system of cooperation, the basis of
equality is having to the requisite minimum degree the moral and
other capacities that enable us to take part fully in the coop- erative
life of society. Thus the equality of citizens is modeled in the origi-
nal position by the equality of their representatives: that is, by the
fact that these representatives are symmetrically situated in that
position and have equal rights in its procedure for reaching
agreement.
I note that in taking the moral powers as the basis of equality we in
effect distinguish between a political society and the many
associations within it and across it. The latter are associations that
cross political boundaries, such as churches and scientific societies.
Some of these associations are communities: churches and scientific
societies again illustrate this; but uni- versities and other cultural
institutions are also communities. The members of a community are
united in pursuing certain shared values and ends (other than
economic) that lead them to support the association and in part bind
them to it. In justice as fairness a democratic political society has no
such shared values and ends apart from those falling under or
connected with the political conception of justice itself. The citizens
of a well-ordered society affirm the constitution and its political
values as realized in their in- stitutions, and they share the end of
giving one another justice, as society's arrangements require.

The significance of this distinction between a democratic society and

the

communities within it will become evident later and rests on a

number of

its special features. For example, we are born into society, and while
we may

be born into communities also, into religions and their distinctive

cultures,
only society with its political form of government and its law
exercises coer-

cive power. While we can leave communities voluntarily (the

constitutional

liberties guarantee this: apostasy is not a crime), there is a sense in

which

we cannot leave our political society voluntarily (§26). Also a

community

can reward or single out its members in proportion to their

contribution to

its shared values and ends; but a democratic society has no such
shared values and ends (falling under the good) by which its citizens
can be distin- guished. All who can be fully cooperating members of
political society count as equals and can be treated differently only
as the public political conception of justice allows.

It is a serious error not to distinguish between the idea of a

democratic political society and the idea of community. Of course, a
democratic society is hospitable to many communities within it, and
indeed tries to be a social world within which diversity can flourish in
amity and concord; but it is not itself a community, nor can it be in
view of the fact of reasonable plural- ism. For that would require the
oppressive use of government power which is incompatible with
basic democratic liberties. From the start, then, we view a
democratic society as a political society that excludes a confessional
or an aristocratic state, not to mention a caste, slave, or a racist one.
This exclusion is a consequence of taking the moral powers as the
basis of politi- cal equality.

7.4. In what sense are citizens free? Here again we must keep in mind
that justice as fairness is a political conception of justice for a
democratic society. The relevant meaning of free persons is to be
drawn from the politi- cal culture of such a society and may have
little or no connection, for exam- ple, with freedom of the will as
discussed in the philosophy of mind. Fol- lowing up this idea, we say
that citizens are regarded as free persons in two respects.

First, citizens are free in that they conceive of themselves and of one
an- other as having the moral power to have a conception of the
good. This is not to say that, as part of their political conception,
they view themselves as inevitably tied to the pursuit of the
particular conception of the good which they affirm at any given
time. Rather, as citizens, they are seen as capable of revising and
changing this conception on reasonable and rational grounds, and
they may do this if they so desire. As free persons, citizens claim the
right to view their persons as independent from and not identified
with any particular conception of the good, or scheme of final ends.
Given their moral power to form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a
conception of the good, their public or legal identity as free persons
is not affected by changes

over time in their determinate conception of the good. For example,

when citizens convert from one religion to another, or no longer
affirm an established religious faith, they do not cease to be, for
questions of political justice, the same persons they were before.
There is no loss of what we may call their public, or legal, identity
their identity as a matter of basic law. In general, they still have the
same basic rights and duties, they own the same property and can
make the same claims as be- fore, except insofar as these claims were
connected with their previous reli- gious affiliation. We can imagine a
society (indeed history offers numerous examples) in which basic
rights and recognized claims depend on religious affiliation and
social class. Such a society has a different political concep- tion of
the person. It may not have a conception of citizenship at all; for this
conception, as we are using it, goes with the conception of society as
a fair system of cooperation for reciprocal advantage between free
and equal citizens.

There is another sense of identity specified by reference to citizens'

deeper aims and commitments. Let's call it their nonlegal or moral

iden

tity.19 Now citizens usually have both political and nonpolitical aims
and

commitments. Thus they affirm the values of political justice and

want to

see them embodied in political institutions and social policies. They

also
work for the other nonpolitical values and ends of the associations to
which

they belong. These two aspects of their moral identity citizens must
adjust

and reconcile. It can happen that in their personal affairs, or in the

internal

life of their associations, citizens may regard their final ends and
attach-

ments very differently from the way the political conception

supposes.

They may have, and often do have at any given time, affections,
devotions,

and loyalties that they believe they would not, indeed could and
should

not, stand apart from and evaluate objectively. They may regard it as
simply

unthinkable to view themselves apart from certain religious,

philosophical,
and moral convictions, or from certain enduring attachments and
loyalties.

These two kinds of commitments and attachments-political and non-

political-specify moral identity and give shape to a person's way of
life, what one sees oneself as doing and trying to accomplish in the
social world. If we suddenly lost them, we would be disoriented and
unable to carry on. In fact, there would be, we might think, no point
in carrying on. Our con- ceptions of the good may and often do
change over time, however, usually slowly but sometimes rather
suddenly. When these changes are sudden, we are particularly likely
to say that we are no longer the same person. Weknow what this
means: we refer to a profound and pervasive shift, or rever- sal, in
our final ends and commitments; we refer to our different moral
(which includes our religious) identity. On the road to Damascus Saul
of Tarsus becomes Paul the Apostle. Yet such a conversion implies no
change in our public or legal identity, nor in our personal identity as
this concept is understood by some writers in the philosophy of
mind. And in a well-or- dered society supported by an overlapping
consensus, citizens' (more gen- eral) political values and
commitments, as part of their noninstitutional, or moral, identity are
roughly the same.

7.5. A second respect in which citizens view themselves as free is that

they regard themselves as self-authenticating sources of valid
claims. That is, they regard themselves as being entitled to make
claims on their institu- tions so as to advance their conceptions of
the good (provided these con- ceptions fall within the range
permitted by the public conception of jus- tice). These claims
citizens regard as having weight of their own apart from being
derived from duties and obligations specified by a political concep-
tion of justice, for example, from duties and obligations owed to
society. Claims that citizens regard as founded on duties and
obligations based on their conception of the good and the moral
doctrine they affirm in their own life are also, for our purposes here,
to be counted as self-authenticat- ing. Doing this is reasonable in a
political conception of justice for a consti- tutional democracy, for
provided the conceptions of the good and the moral doctrine
citizens affirm are compatible with the public conception of jus- tice,
these duties and obligations are self-authenticating from a political
point of view.

When we describe the way in which citizens regard themselves as

free, we are relying on how citizens tend to think of themselves in a
democratic society when questions of political justice arise. That this
aspect belongs to a particular political conception is clear from the
contrast with a different political conception in which the members
of society are not viewed as self- authenticating sources of valid
claims. In this case their claims have no weight except insofar as they
can be derived from the duties and obliga- tions owed to society, or
from their ascribed roles in a social hierarchy justi- fied by religious
or aristocratic values.

To take an extreme case, slaves are human beings who are not
counted as sources of claims, not even claims based on social duties
or obligations, for slaves are not counted as capable of having duties
or obligations. Laws that prohibit the abuse and maltreatment of
slaves are not founded on claimsmade by slaves in their own behalf,
but on claims originating either from slaveholders or from the
general interests of society (which do not include the interests of
slaves). Slaves are, so to speak, socially dead: they are not recognized
as persons at all.20 This contrast with a political conception of
justice that allows slavery makes clear why conceiving of citizens as
free persons in virtue of their moral powers and their having a
conception of the good goes with a particular political conception of
the justice.

7.6. I emphasize that the conception of the person as free and equal
is a normative conception: it is given by our moral and political
thought and practice, and it is studied by moral and political
philosophy and by the phi- losophy of law. Since ancient Greece,
both in philosophy and in law, the concept of the person has been
that of someone who can take part in, or play a role in, social life, and
hence who can exercise and respect its various rights and duties. In
specifying the central organizing idea of society as a fair system of
cooperation, we use the companion idea of free and equal persons as
those who can play the role of fully cooperating members. As suits a
political conception of justice that views society as a fair system of
cooperation, a citizen is someone who can be a free and equal
participant over a complete life.

This conception of the person is not to be mistaken for the

conception of a human being (a member of the species homo
sapiens) as the latter might be specified in biology or psychology
without the use of normative concepts of various kinds, including,
for example, the concepts of the moral powers and of the moral and
political virtues. Moreover, to characterize the person, we must add
to these concepts those used to formulate the powers of reason,
inference, and judgment. These are essential companion powers to
the two moral powers and are required for their exercise and for the
practice of the virtues.

§8. Relation between the Fundamental Ideas

8.1. The five fundamental ideas we have discussed so far are closely
re- lated when laid out in the sequence by which they were
introduced: from society as a fair system of cooperation to the idea
of a well-ordered society,to the idea of the basic structure of such a
society, to the idea of the original position, and finally to the idea of
citizens, those engaged in cooperation, as free and equal.

In this sequence we start with the organizing idea of society as a fair

sys- tem of cooperation and then make it more determinate by
spelling out what results when this idea is fully realized (a well-
ordered society), and what this idea applies to (the basic structure).
We then say how the fair terms of cooperation are specified (by the
parties in the original position) and ex- plain how the persons
engaged in cooperation are to be regarded (as free and equal
citizens).

8.2. This spelling out of the central organizing idea of social

cooperation is not a deductive argument. The steps starting with that
idea and proceed- ing to the next are not said to follow from, or to be
derived from, it. We specify the organizing idea and make it more
determinate as we connect it with the other ideas.

To illustrate: there are various ways of specifying the central idea of

so- cial cooperation. As we noted, we might say that the fair terms of
coopera- tion are fixed by natural law viewed either as God's law or
as given by a prior and independent moral order publicly known by
rational intuition. Such ways of fixing those terms have not been
excluded by deductive argu- ment: for instance, by showing them to
be incompatible with the idea of so- cial cooperation. Instead, they
are ruled out by the historical conditions and the public culture of
democracy that set the requirements for a political conception of
justice in a modern constitutional regime. Among those his- torical
conditions is the fact of reasonable pluralism, which rules out com-
prehensive doctrines as a basis for a workable political agreement on
a con- ception of justice. Since justice as fairness looks for such a
basis, it follows a different course.

8.3. We cannot tell in advance whether the idea of social

cooperation, and its two companion ideas, will provide the organizing
ideas we need for a workable political conception of justice. The
public political culture is not unambiguous: it contains a variety of
possible organizing ideas that might be used instead, various ideas of
liberty and equality, and other ideas of society. All we need claim is
that the idea of society as a fair system of co- operation is deeply
embedded in that culture, and so it is not unreasonable to examine
its merits as a central organizing idea. The point is that what-ever
idea we select as the central organizing idea cannot be fully justified
by its own intrinsic reasonableness, as its intrinsic reasonableness
cannot suf- fice for that. Such an idea can be fully justified (if at all)
only by the concep- tion of political justice to which it eventually
leads when worked out, and by how well that conception coheres
with our considered convictions of political justice at all levels of
generality in what we may call wide (and gen- eral) reflective
equilibrium (§10). The idea of reflective equilibrium con- nects with
that of public justification, to which we now turn.

§9. The Idea of Public Justification

9.1. So far we have discussed five fundamental ideas beginning with

the central organizing idea of society as a fair system of social
cooperation. Now we turn to a sixth and last fundamental idea, the
idea of public jus- tification, and three other ideas related to it: those
of reflective equilibrium (§10),22 of an overlapping consensus (§1),
and of free public reason (§26). The aim of the idea of public
justification is to specify the idea of justifica- tion in a way
appropriate to a political conception of justice for a society
characterized, as a democracy is, by reasonable pluralism.

The idea of public justification goes with the idea of a well-ordered

soci- ety, for such a society is effectively regulated by a publicly
recognized con- ception of justice (§3). From the preceding
discussion, we see that to fill this role a conception of justice should
have three features. These make it a political conception of justice:

(a) While it is, of course, a moral conception, it is worked out for a

spe- cific subject, namely, the basic structure of a democratic
society. It does not apply directly to associations and groups within
society, and only later do we try to extend it to connect it with the
principles of local justice and to cover the relations between
peoples.

(b) Accepting this conception does not presuppose accepting any

partic- ular comprehensive doctrine. A political conception presents
itself as a rea-

21. Intrinsic reasonableness, or acceptability, is a difficult idea. It

means that a judgment or conviction strikes us as reasonable, or
acceptable, without our deriving it from, or basing it on, other
judgments. Of course, that a conviction strikes us as reasonable may
indeed turn out to depend on our other beliefs and convictions, but
that is not how it strikes us. On due reflection we may affirm the
conviction as having a certain reasonableness, or acceptability, on its
own.sonable conception for the basic structure alone and its
principles express a family of political values that characteristically
apply to that structure.

(c) A political conception of justice is formulated so far as possible

solely in terms of fundamental ideas familiar from, or implicit in, the
public politi- cal culture of a democratic society: for example, the
idea of society as a fair system of cooperation and the idea of
citizens as free and equal. That there are such ideas in their public
culture is taken as a fact about democratic so- cieties.

9.2. We saw that in a well-ordered society effectively regulated by a

pub- licly recognized political conception of justice, everyone
accepts the same principles of justice. These principles provide,
then, a mutually acceptable point of view from which citizens' claims
on the main institutions of the ba- sic structure can be adjudicated.
An essential feature of a well-ordered soci- ety is that its public
conception of political justice establishes a shared basis for citizens
to justify to one another their political judgments: each cooper- ates,
politically and sociaily, with the rest on terms all can endorse as just.
This is the meaning of public justification.

So understood, justification is addressed to others who disagree with

us (Theory, $87). If there is no conflict in judgment about questions of
politi- cal justice-judgments about the justice of certain principles
and standards, particular institutions and policies, and the like-there
is nothing so far to justify. To justify our political judgments to others
is to convince them by public reason, that is, by ways of reasoning
and inference appropriate to fundamental political questions, and by
appealing to beliefs, grounds, and political values it is reasonable for
others also to acknowledge. Public jus- tification proceeds from
some consensus: from premises all parties in dis- agreement,
assumed to be free and equal and fully capable of reason, may
reasonably be expected to share and freely endorse.

Public justification is not, then, simply valid argument from given

pre- mises (though of course it is that). Valid argument is instructive
in setting out the relations between statements: it joins basic ideas
and general state- ments with one another and with more particular
judgments; it exhibits the overall structure of conceptions of any
kind. By connecting the elements of a conception into an intelligible
and perspicuous whole, it serves as a mode of exposition. But when
the premises and conclusions are not acceptable on due reflection to
all parties in disagreement, valid argument falls short of public
justification. For justice as fairness to succeed, it must be acceptable,
not only to our own considered convictions, but also to those of
others, and this at all levels of generality in more or less wide and
general reflective equilibrium (as explained below in §10).

9.3. Of course, it is too much to expect complete agreement on all

politi- cal questions. The practicable aim is to narrow disagreement
at least re- garding the more divisive controversies, and in particular
those that involve

the constitutional essentials (§13.5); for what is of greatest urgency is

con- sensus on those essentials, for example: (1) the fundamental
principles that specify the general structure of gov- ernment and the
political process; the powers of the legislature, executive, and the
judiciary; the limits of majority rule; and
(2) the equal basic rights and liberties of citizenship that legislative
ma- jorities must respect, such as the right to vote and to participate
in politics, freedom of thought and of association, liberty of
conscience, as well as the protections of the rule of law. These and
other matters are a complex story; I merely hint at what is

meant. The point is that if a political conception of justice covers the

con- stitutional essentials, it is already of enormous importance even
if it has lit- tle to say about many economic and social issues that
legislative bodies must consider. To resolve these it is often
necessary to go outside that con- ception and the political values its
principles express, and to invoke values and considerations it does
not include. But so long as there is firm agree- ment on the
constitutional essentials, the hope is that political and social
cooperation between free and equal citizens can be maintained.

9.4. Clearly one leading aim of public justification is to preserve the

conditions of effective and democratic social cooperation on a
footing of mutual respect between citizens regarded as free and
equal. Such justification depends on an agreement in judgment at
least on constitutional essentials; and so, when that agreement is in
jeopardy, one task of political philosophy is to try to work out a
conception of justice that narrows disagreement on at least the most
disputed questions. Contrast two ideas of public justification on
matters political: the first appeals to a political conception of justice,
the second appeals to a comprehensive doctrine, religious,
philosophical, or moral. Thus a comprehensive moral doctrine tries
to show which political judgments are true as specified, say, by
rational intuitionism, or by a variant of utilitarianism. Now, so far as
possible, political liberalism neither accepts nor rejects any
particular comprehensive doctrine, moral or religious. It does allow
that it belongs to these doctrines to search for religious,
philosophical, and moral truth. Justice as fairness hopes to put aside
long-standing religious and philosophical controversies and to avoid
relying on any particular comprehensive view. It uses a different
idea, that of public justification, and seeks to moderate divisive
political conflicts and to specify the conditions of fair social
cooperation between citizens. To realise this aim we try to work up,
from the fundamental ideas implicit in the political culture, a public
basis of justification that all citizens as reasonable and rational can
endorse from within their own comprehensive doctrines. If this is
achieved, we have an overlapping consensus of reasonable doctrines
(§11), and with it, the political conception affirmed in reflective
equilibrium. It is this last condition of reasoned reflection that,
among other things, distinguishes public justification from mere
agreement.

§10. The Idea of Reflective Equilibrium

10.1. To explain the idea of reflective equilibrium we start from the

thought (included in the idea of free and equal persons) that citizens
have a capacity for reason (both theoretical and practical) as well as
a sense of justice. Under the normal circumstances of human life,
these powers gradually develop, and after the age of reason are
exercised in many kinds of judgments of justice ranging over all kinds
of subjects, from the basic structure of society to the particular
actions and character of people in everyday life. The sense of justice
(as a form of moral sensibility) involves an intellectual power, since
its exercise in making judgments calls upon the powers of reason,
imagination and judgment. We select from our judgments of political
justice those we refer to as considered judgments or considered
convictions. These are judgments given under conditions in in which
our capacity for judgment is most likely to to have been fully
exercised and not affected by distorting influences (Theory, §9).
Considered judgments are those given when conditions are
favourable to the exercise of our powers of reason and sense of
justice: that is, under conditions where we seem to have the ability,
the opportunity, and the desire to make a sound judgment; or at least
we have no apparent interest in not do- ing so, the more familiar
temptations being absent. Some judgments we view as fixed points:
ones we never expect to withdraw, as when Lincoln says: "If slavery is
not wrong, nothing is wrong."

23 The positions of judges, umpires, and referees are designed to

include conditions that encourage the exercise of the judicial virtues,
among them impartiality and judiciousness, so that their verdicts can
be seen as approximating considered judgments, so far as the case
allows.

10.2. Not only do our considered judgments often differ from those
of other persons, but our own judgments are sometimes in conflict
with one another. The implications of the judgments we render on
one question may be inconsistent or incongruent with those we
render on other questions. This point deserves emphasis. Many of
our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who
suppose their judgments are always consistent are unreflective or
dogmatic; not uncommonly they are ideologues and zealots. The
question arises: how can we make our own considered judgments of
political justice more consistent both within themselves and with the
considered judgments of others without imposing on ourselves an
external political authority? We approach this problem as follows: we
note that we make considered political judgments at all levels of
generality, ranging from particular judgments on the particular
actions of individuals to judgments about the justice and injustice of
particular institutions and social policies, and ending finally at highly
general convictions. Among these convictions are those about the
restrictions to impose on reasons for favouring principles of justice
for the basic structure, and these convictions we model by the idea
of the veil of ignorance in the original position (§6).

Justice as fairness regards all our judgments, whatever their level of

generality-whether a particular judgment or a high-level general
conviction- as capable of having for us, as reasonable and rational, a
certain intrinsic reasonableness. Yet since we are of divided mind
and our judgments conflict with those of other people, some of these
judgments must eventually be revised, suspended, or withdrawn, if
the practical aim of reaching reasonable agreement on matters of
political justice is to be achieved.

10.3. Focusing now on any one person, suppose we (as observers)

find the conception of political justice that makes the fewest
revisions in that person's initial judgments and proves to be
acceptable when the conception is presented and explained. When
the person in question adopts this conception and brings other
judgments in line with it we say this person is in narrow reflective
equilibrium. The equilibrium is narrow because, while general
convictions, first principles, and particular judgments are in line, we
looked for the conception of justice that called for the fewest
revisions to achieve consistency, and neither alternative conceptions
of justice nor the force of the various arguments for those
conceptions have been taken into account by the person in question.

This suggests that we regard as wide reflective equilibrium (still in

the case of one person) that reflective equilibrium reached when
someone has carefully considered alternative conceptions of justice
and the force of various arguments for them. More exactly, this
person has considered the lead- ing conceptions of political justice
found in our philosophical tradition (including views critical of the
concept of justice itself (some think Marx's view is an example)), and
has weighed the force of the different philosophical and other
reasons for them. In this case, we suppose this person's general
convictions, first principles, and particular judgments are in line; but
now the reflective equilibrium is wide, given the wide-ranging
reflection and possibly many changes of view that have preceded it.
Wide and not narrow reflective equilibrium is plainly the important
concept (Theory, §9, though the terms "narrow" and "wide" are
unfortunately not used there).

10.4. Recall that a well-ordered society is a society effectively

regulated by a public conception of justice. Think of each citizen in
such a society as having achieved wide (versus narrow) reflective
equilibrium. But since citizens recognise that they affirm the same
public conception of political justice, reflective equilibrium is also
general: the same conception is affirmed in everyone's considered
judgments. Thus citizens have achieved general and wide, or what we
may refer to as full, reflective equilibrium. (The adjective "full" we
reserve for features as realised in a well-ordered society.) In such a
society not only is there a public point of view from which all citizens
can adjudicate their claims, but also this point of view is mutually
recognised as affirmed by them all in full reflective equilibrium.

From what we said above (in §10.2), the idea of justification paired
with full reflective equilibrium is non foundationalist in this way: no
specified kind of considered judgment of political justice or
particular level of generality is thought to carry the whole weight of
public justification. Considered judgments of all kinds and levels may
have an intrinsic reasonableness, or acceptability, to reasonable
persons that persists after due reflection. The most reasonable
political conception for us is the one that best fits all our considered
convictions on reflection and organises them into a coherent view. At
any given time, we cannot do better than that. In justice as fairness,
full reflective equilibrium is characterised by its practical aim,
reasoned reflection, and its non foundationalist aspect, as described
above. In this way it meets the need for a basis of public justification
on questions of political justice; for coherence among considered
convictions at all levels of generality and in wide and general
reflective equilibrium is all that is required for the practical aim of
reaching reasonable agreement on matters of political justice. With
other ideas of justification specified by certain comprehensive
doctrines, coherence of this kind presumably does not suffice. But
endorsing other ideas of justification alone will not prevent such
doctrines from belonging to an overlapping consensus.

§11. The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus

11.1. The idea of an overlapping consensus is introduced to make the

idea of a well-ordered society more realistic and to adjust it to the
historical and social conditions of democratic societies, which
include the fact of reasonable pluralism. While in a well-ordered
society all citizens affirm the same political conception of justice, we
do not assume they do so for all the same reasons, all the way down."
Citizens have conflicting religious, philosophical, and moral views
and so they affirm the political conception from within different and
opposing comprehensive doctrines, and so, in part at least, for
different reasons. But this does not prevent the political conception
from being a shared point of view from which they can resolve
questions concerning the constitutional essentials.

Thus to formulate a realistic idea of a well-ordered society, given the

his- torical conditions of the modern world, we do not say that its
public politi- cal conception of justice is affirmed by citizens from
within the same com- prehensive doctrine. The fact of reasonable
pluralism implies that there is no such doctrine, whether fully or
partially comprehensive, on which all citizens do or can agree to
settle the fundamental questions of political justice. Rather, we say
that in a well-ordered society the political conception is affirmed by
what we refer to as a reasonable overlapping consensus. By this we
mean that the political conception is supported by the reasonable
though opposing religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines that
gain a significant body of adherents and endure over time from one
generation to the next. This is, I believe, the most reasonable basis of
political and social unity available to citizens of a democratic society.

11.2. The thought is that citizens in a well-ordered society affirm two

distinct although closely related views. One of these is the political
conception of justice they all affirm. The other is one of the opposing
comprehensive (or partially comprehensive) doctrines, religious,
philosophical, and moral, found in society. For those who hold well-
articulated, highly systematic, comprehensive doctrines, it is from
within such a doctrine (that is, starting from its basic assumptions)
that these citizens affirm the political conception of justice. The
fundamental concepts, principles, and virtues of the political
conception are theorems, as it were, of their comprehensive views.
Justice as fairness has the three features of a political conception
that should help it to gain the support of a reasonable overlapping
consensus. Its requirements are limited to society's basic structure,
its acceptance pre supposes no particular comprehensive view, and
its fundamental ideas are familiar and drawn from the public political
culture. The three features allow different comprehensive views to
endorse it. These include religious doctrines that affirm liberty of
conscience and support the basic constitutional freedoms, as well as
various liberal philosophical doctrines, such as those of Kant and
Mill, that likewise do so.
We need not enumerate further possibilities (of which there are
many) except to add that many citizens may not hold any well-
articulated comprehensive doctrine at all. Perhaps most do not.
Rather, they affirm various religious and philosophical, associational
and personal values together with the political values expressed by
the political conception. These political values are not derived within
any overall, systematic view. People may think that the political
values realised by a just basic structure are normally of sufficient
weight to override whatever other values are likely come in conflict
with them. So while their whole view is comprehensive in that it
includes nonpolitical values, it is only partially comprehensive in
being neither systematic nor complete. In §58 we shall find that this
lack of system and completeness is indeed fortunate, and helps to
permit a modus vivendi to change over time into an overlapping
consensus.

11.3. In giving an important place to the idea of an overlapping

consensus, we assume the fact of reasonable pluralism to be a
permanent condition of a democratic society. Any political
conception has a view of the political and social world and relies on
certain general facts of political sociology and human psychology.
The fact of reasonable pluralism is the first of five such facts that are
especially important in justice as fairness.

To elaborate: the diversity of religious, philosophical, and moral

doctrines found in modern democratic societies is not a mere
historical condition that may soon pass away; it is a permanent
feature of the public culture of democracy. Under the political and
social conditions secured by the basic rights and liberties of free
institutions, a diversity of conflicting and irreconcilable yet
reasonable comprehensive doctrines will come about and persist,
should it not already exist. This fact about free societies is what I call
the fact of reasonable pluralism.

A second and related general fact is that a continuing shared

adherence to one comprehensive doctrine can be maintained only
by the oppressive use of state power, with all its official crimes and
the inevitable brutality and cruelties, followed by the corruption of
religion, philosophy, and science. If we say a political society is a
community when it is united in affirming one and the same
comprehensive doctrine (recall §7.3), then the oppressive use of
state power with these attendant evils is necessary to maintain
political community. Let us call this the fact of oppression. In the
society of the Middle Ages, more or less united in affirming the
Catholic faith, the Inquisition was not an accident; its suppression of
heresy was needed to preserve the shared religious belief. The same
holds, we suppose, for any comprehensive philosophical and moral
doctrine, even secular ones. A society united on a form of
utilitarianism, or on the moral views of Kant or Mill, would likewise
require the oppressive sanctions of state power to remain so. 25

A third general fact is that an enduring and secure democratic

regime, one not divided by bitter doctrinal disputes and hostile
social classes, must be willingly and freely supported by at least a
substantial majority of its politically active citizens. Together with
the first general fact, this means that to serve as a public basis of
justification for a constitutional regime a conception of justice must
be one that can be endorsed by widely different and even
irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines. Otherwise the regime will
not be enduring and secure. This leads us to introduce the idea of a
political conception of justice, as specified in §9.
We add, then, a fourth general fact: that the political culture of a
democratic society that has worked reasonably well over a
considerable period of time normally contains, at least implicitly,
certain fundamental ideas from which it is possible to work up a
political conception of justice suitable for a constitutional regime.

11.4. What lies behind these first four general facts? Surely all, and
especially the first two (the fact of reasonable pluralism and the fact
of oppression), call for explanation. For why should free institutions
with their basic rights and liberties lead to diversity; and why should
state power be required to overcome it? Why doesn't our sincere and
conscientious attempt to reason with one another lead us to
agreement? It seems to do so in science, or in natural science
anyway, at least in the long run.

There are several possible explanations. We might suppose that most

people hold views that advance their own more narrow interests; and
since their interests are different, so are their views. Or perhaps
people are often irrational and not very bright, and this mixed with
logical errors leads to conflicting opinions. But these explanations
are too easy, and not the kind we want. We want to know how
reasonable disagreement is possible, for we always begin work within
ideal theory. Thus we ask: how might reasonable disagreement come
about?

An explanation of the right kind is that the sources of reasonable dis-

agreement-what I call the burdens of judgment among reasonable
per- sons are the many obstacles to the correct (and conscientious)
exercise of
These obstacles include the following:

(a) The evidence-empirical and scientific-bearing on a case may be

conflicting and complex, and thus hard to assess and evaluate. (b)
Even where we agree fully about the kinds of considerations that are
relevant, we may disagree about their weight, and so arrive at
different judgments.

(c) To some degree all our concepts, and not only our moral and
political concepts, are vague and subject to hard cases. This
indeterminacy means that we must rely on judgment and
interpretation (and on judgments about interpretations) within some
range (not sharply specifiable) where reasonable persons may differ.
(d) The way we assess evidence and weigh moral and political values
is shaped (how much so we cannot tell) by our total experience, our
whole course of life up to now; and our total experiences surely
differ. So in a modern society with its numerous offices and positions,
its many divisions of labor, its many social groups and often their
ethnic variety, citizens' total experiences differ enough for their
judgments to diverge to some degree on many if not most cases of
any significant complexity. (e) Often there are different kinds of
normative considerations of different force on both sides of a
question and it is difficult to make an overall assessment.

26

A fifth and last general fact may be stated as follows: that many of
our most important political judgments involving the basic political
values are made subject to conditions such that it is highly unlikely
that conscientious and fully reasonable persons, even after free and
open discussion, can exercise their powers of reason so that all arrive
at the same conclusion.
11.5. This fact must not be understood to imply a philosophical
doctrine of skepticism.27 It does not mean that reasonable persons
do not agree in political judgment because objective values do not
exist, or are subjective; or that what we take as judgments about
values are simply historically conditioned opinions giving voice to
interests rooted in time and place. It refers instead to the many
difficulties in reaching agreement arising with all kinds of judgment.
These difficulties are particularly acute in the case of political
judgments in view of the very great complexity of the questions
raised, the often impressionistic nature of the evidence, and the
severity of the conflicts they commonly address.

The burdens of judgment alone can account for the fact of

reasonable pluralism (there are of course other reasons); and since
we cannot eliminate these burdens, pluralism is a permanent feature
of a free democratic culture. We do not deny that vanity and greed,
the will to dominate and the desire for glory are prominent in politics
and affect the rise and fall of nations. Yet since we cannot as a
democracy use state power, with its attendant cruelties and
corruptions of civic and cultural life, to eradicate diversity, we look
for a political conception of justice that can gain the support of a
reasonable overlapping consensus to serve as a public basis of
justification.

26. A related point has often been stressed by Isaiah Berlin; namely,
that any system of social institutions is limited in the range of values
it can accommodate, so that some selection must be made from the
full range of moral and political values that might be realised. This is
because any system of institutions has, as it were, but a limited social
space. In being forced to select among cherished values, we face
great difficulties in setting priorities, and face other hard decisions
that may seem to have no clear answer. See his statement in "On the
Pursuit of the Ideal," in The Crooked Timber of Humanity, ed. Henry
Hardy (New York:Knopf, 1991sity, we look for a political conception
of justice that can gain the support of a reasonable overlapping
consensus to serve as a public basis of justification.

11.6. In conclusion, two remarks to prevent misunderstandings of the

idea of an overlapping consensus:

First, given the actual comprehensive views existing in society, no

matter what their content, there is plainly no guarantee that justice
as fairness, or any reasonable conception for a democratic regime,
can gain the support of an overlapping consensus and in that way
underwrite the stability of its political institutions. Many doctrines
are plainly incompatible with the values of democracy. Moreover,
political liberalism does not say that the values articulated by a
political conception of justice, though of basic significance, outweigh
the transcendent values (as people may interpret them) religious,
philosophical, or moral with which the political conception may
possibly conflict. To say that would go beyond the political. A second
remark is that we start from the conviction that a constitutional
democratic regime is reasonably just and workable, and worth
defending. But given the fact of reasonable pluralism, we try to
design our defense of it so as to gain the allegiance of reasonable
people and to win wide support. We do not look to the
comprehensive doctrines that in fact exist and then frame a political
conception that strikes a balance between them expressly designed
to gain their allegiance. To do that would make the political
conception political in the wrong way (§56).
Instead, we ask how to frame a conception of justice for a
constitutional regime that both seems defensible in its own right and
is such that those who support, or who might be brought to support,
that kind of regime can also endorse that conception. We assume
that we know nothing in advance about people's comprehensive
views, and we try to put no unnecessary obstacles in the way of their
affirming the political conception. This leads to the idea of a political
conception of justice that presupposes no particular comprehensive
view, and hence may be supported by an enduring overlapping
consensus of reasonable doctrines, given good fortune and enough
time to gain allegiance to itself.

In Part V we consider whether a well-ordered democratic society is

possible, and if so, how its possibility is consistent with human
nature and the requirements of workable political institutions. We
try to show that the well-ordered society of justice as fairness is
indeed possible according to

our nature and those requirements. This endeavour belongs to

political philosophy as reconciliation; for seeing that the conditions
of a social world at least allow for that possibility affects our view of
the world itself and our attitude toward it. No longer need it seem
hopelessly hostile, a world in which the will to dominate and
oppressive cruelties, abetted by prejudice and folly, must inevitably
prevail. None of this may ease our loss, situated as we may be in a
corrupt society. But we may reflect that the world is not in itself
inhospitable to political justice and its good. Our social world might
have been different and there is hope for those at another time and
place.