The Research On Rawls’s Idea Of "Overlapping Consensus"

John Rawls is a very distinguished political philosopher, who takes a research on social justiceissues throughout his life career pursuit. From the early "A Theory of Justice" to the late "PoliticalLiberalism", Rawls has been trying to make his justice principles to guide the picture of awell-ordered society. But then he realized, modern liberal society consists of various existingcompleteness theory which is inconsistent with his argument on the stability of the concept of justicein a theory of justice.In order to maintain the coherence and the realization of the social stability, hemodified his concept of "justice as fairness",limit its scope to the political realm, only used toregulate the "basic structure of a society", but do not make any judgment at the complete theory oftruth view, in order to avoid all kinds of different and conflicting demands.Then, how the various conflicting and irreconcilable rational doctrine completeness can identifya political conception of justice? Can the various rational comprehensive doctrines reach a consensuson the concept of political justice? This is to be solved in his "Political Liberalism".The idea of "overlapping consensus" is the answer to the question."Overlapping consensus"refers to that in a plural and democratic society, different and conflicting rational religion,philosophy and moral doctrines reach on the concept of political justce in order to achieve socialstability and long-term development,which is called the "overlapping consensus". As the core ideaof Rawls’s political liberalism theory system, the success implementation of "overlappingconsensus" directly related to the whole intellectual edifice. Although the idea of the "overlappingconsensus" can avoid theoretical difficulties in "a theory of justice", the possibility of it still suffereda lot of criticism and questioning.This article begins with the idea of the "overlapping consensus",introduce its background,theoretical connotation and relationship with other ideas and concepts,with which taking anintroduction and commentary text analysis, will focus on discussing the possibility of the idea of the"overlapping consensus". Objections of some theorists of the "overlapping consensus" is introducedand the analysis and evaluation are given by myself.The idea of the "overlapping consensus" does pursue an epistemological foundation. It is aspecific idea of specific social environment in a specific historical conditions,it is not universal and it is only a political solution to reconcile pluralism in modern liberal democracy society,which alsohas significance and some inspiration to the ongoing democratic political construction in China.