| Rawls's justificatory structure is a main concern of this dissertation. Rawls's ground of justification is the method of wide reflective equilibrium as coherentism. However, he fails in justifying his liberal state. First of all, he overemphasizes the shared fund of democratic political culture in constructing theory of justice. In a similar vein, Rawls put too much emphasis on the unanimous decision by the veil of ignorance in the original position. Also Rawls is too optimistic on the possibility of the overlapping consensus from various reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I think that Rawls's failure stems from his implicit effort to achieve universal principle of justice. In order to achieve universal principle of justice, Rawls have to pay the cost. Rawls does not verify the universality of the democratic public culture. If we use another features of the democratic public culture, we can develop a different principle from Rawls's. Furthermore, the serious defect of application is to exclude unreasonable comprehensive doctrines for the overlapping consensus. Therefore, Rawls distorts liberal idea of tolerance. Even in the public sphere, liberal society should tolerate diverse ways of life, opinions, and political principles.; Secondly, Rawls confuses the just society with a stable society. Rawls tries to show that the social stability is insured by the overlapping consensus of various reasonable comprehensive doctrines on a just principle. Yet the overlapping consensus is an ideal project. In the actual situations such as constitutional convention and legislative stage, negotiation among various comprehensive doctrines can achieve the stability of a society. In case of Rawls's first stage of constructivism, the veil of ignorance prevents this negotiation procedure.; Thirdly, Rawls's theory of right does not pay enough attention to the various virtues for the social cooperation. Rawls simply mentions about the love of mankind, fellow feeling, mutual trust and fraternity in order to develop the sense of justice. However, he never explains how these virtues are related one after another in the three stages of morality. |
