The Question of Stability
§ 1
Justice as fairness is best presented in two stages (l:3.6). In the first stage it is worked out as a freestanding political (but of course moral) conception for the basic structure of society. Only with this done and its content its principles of justice and ideals provisionally on hand do we take up, in the second stage, the problem whether justice as fairness is sufficiently stable. Unless it is so, it is not a satisfactory political conception of justice and it must be in some way revised.
Stability involves two questions: the first is whether people who grow up under just institutions (as the political conception defines them) acquire a normally sufficient sense of justice so that they generally comply with those institutions. The second question is whether in view of the general facts that characterize a democracy's public political culture, and in particular the fact of reasonable pluralism, the political conception can be the focus of an overlapping consensus. I assume this consensus to consist of reasonable comprehensive doctrines likely to persist and gain adherents over time within a just basic structure (as the political conception defines it).
Each question of stability has a separate answer. The first is answered by setting out the moral psychology (I1:7) in accordance with which citizens in a well-ordered society acquire a normally sufficient sense of justice so that they comply with its just arrangements. The second is answered by the idea of an overlapping consensus and meeting the various difficulties arising in connection with it (§§4-7).
While the problem of stability has been on our minds from the outset, the explicit discussion of it begins only at the second stage since the principles of justice for the basic structure are not on hand until then. Their content is not affected in any way by the particular comprehensive doctrines that may exist in society. This is because, at the first stage, justice as fairness abstracts from the knowledge of citizens' determinate conceptions of the good and proceeds from shared political conceptions of society and person that are required in applying the ideals and principles of practical reason. So while a political conception of justice addresses the fact of reasonable pluralism, it is not political in the wrong way: that is, its form and content are not affected by the existing balance of political power between comprehensive doctrines. Nor do its principles strike a compromise between the more dominant ones.
§ 2
To clarify the idea of stability, let us distinguish two ways in which a political conception may be concerned with it. In one way we view stability as a purely practical matter: if a conception fails to be stable, it is futile to try to realize it. Perhaps we think there are two separate tasks: one is to work out a political conception that seems sound, or reasonable, at least to us; the other is to find ways to bring others who reject it also to share it; or failing that, to act in accordance with it, if need be prompted by penalties enforced by state power. As long as the means of persuasion or enforcement can be found, the conception is viewed as stable.
But, as a liberal conception, justice as fairness is concerned with stability in a different way. Finding a stable conception is not simply a matter of avoiding futility. Rather, what counts is the kind of stability, the nature of the forces that secure it. To answer the first question of stability noted above, we try to show that, given certain assumptions specifying a reasonable human psychology and the normal conditions of human life, those who grow up under just basic institutions acquire a sense of justice and a reasoned allegiance to those institutions sufficient to render them stable. Expressed another way, citizens' sense of justice, given their traits of character and interests as formed by living under a just basic structure, is strong enough to resist the normal tendencies to injustice. Citizens act willingly so as to give one another justice over time. Stability is secured by sufficient motivation of the appropriate kind acquired under just institutions.
To answer the second question as to whether, given the fact of reasonable pluralism, justice as fairness can be the focus of an overlapping consensus, we have to discuss not only the idea of such a consensus and the difficulties it raises, but also to show how, with the same reasonable moral psychology used in answering the first question, justice as fairness can indeed assume that role.
§ 3
The kind of stability required of justice as fairness is based, then, on its being a liberal political view, one that aims at being acceptable to citizens as reasonable and rational, as well as free and equal, and so as addressed to their public reason. Earlier, in §1.2, we saw how this feature of liberalism connects with the feature of political power in a constitutional regime: namely, that it is the power of equal citizens as a collective body. lf justice as fairness were not expressly designed to gain the reasoned support of citizens who affirm reasonable although conflicting comprehensive doctrines the existence of such conflicting doctrines being a feature of the kind of public culture that liberal conception itself encourages it would not be liberal.
The point, then, is that the problem of stability is not that of bringing others who reject a conception to share it, or to act in accordance with it, by workable sanctions, if necessary, as if the task were to find ways to impose that conception once we are convinced it is sound. Rather, justice as fairness is not reasonable in the first place unless in a suitable way it can win its support by addressing each citizen's reason, as explained within its own framework. Only so is it an account of the legitimacy of political authority as opposed to an account of how those who hold political power can satisfy themselves, and not citizens generally, that they are acting properly. A conception of political legitimacy aims for a public basis of justification and appeals to public reason, and hence to free and equal citizens viewed as reasonable and rational.
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