The Constructivist Strategy Of Justification And Its Dilemma In Rawls’ Political Philosophy

In the debate context of modern Anglo-American political philosophy, justification is becoming an striking question day after day. From the viewpoint of justification, all normative principles, political institutions and behaviour of our everyday life, if we want to get the conclusion that what is right and what is wrong, and make a judgment to their legitimacy and acceptability, we should make out some methods and standards in order to make sure that they can provide some relevant reasons no matter whether people hold the attitude of suspecting, reflecting or defending. On this issue, what Rawls has done is not only provided a system of political principle of justice which is called "two principles of justice" to the Anglo-American social and political world, but also aimed to provide a system of classical justification method consciously and critically. This kind of justification method is named constructivism after his lectures in 1980. It aimed to criticize the traditional methods such as foundationalism and coherence theory of justification. It claims that in the beginning of our practical reasoning, we have to try our best to find a proper reasoning starting point which could reveal and stand firmly in our real living world, besides, we have to lay out a system of effective and strictly deductive reasoning procedure. In the double definition and restriction of starting point and procedure, we can justify some certain kinds of principles, institutions and behaviour.In Rawls’ own theory, this set of reasoning structure is very complicated and in somehow vague, besides, there are some tensions between Ralws’ theoretical aim and this reasoning structure. Because of these tensions, Rawls’ reasoning structure has gone through many times of adjustments and transformations along with his thought process. Through these adjustments and transformations, Rawls aims to put his ground, that is, his starting points stand firmly on people’s real living world, and defend the political value of liberalism in this real living world. However, in the standpoint of empiricism, Rawls’own aim contradicts with this radical constructivism. The radical constructivism claims that the justification should always be a dynamic mode, that is, all reasoning elements, no matter they are reasoning starting points or conclusions, should be indeterminate ones in this dynamic process. Rawls’ two principles of justice, on the contrary, is itself a kind of determinate liberal political value, and holds its determinacy in different reasoning contexts.In this sense, according to John Rawls, although constructivism in empiricist standpoint holds the aim of "non-foundationalism", however, this aim can not be radically, on the contrary, it would inevitably introduce the potential aid of foundationalism. Onora O’Neill, who is one of the students of Rawls, along with Rawls’ process of thought, tries to solve these dilemmas and tensions in his own theory in the standpoint of empiricism in order to formulate a map of constructivism which is more radical and Kantian than John Rawls.