Constructive Justice--Understanding Rawls' Political Constructivism

Political constructivism is a political idea and method Rawls used to construct and interpret his theory of justice. According to the perspective of constructivism, we can trace back an interpretative tradition of constructivism, i.e., the early modern traditional theory of social contract. Rawls connected the theory of contract with kantian constructivism, and constructed the theory of original position in which the central idea is the veil of ignorance. Then with the idea of overlapping consensus, Rawls changed the two principles of justice from original position into political conception of justice which should be confirmed by adherents of comprehensive doctrines in society. In that case, political constructivism has two stages: at the first stage, every side chooses the principles of justice in the original position; at the second stage, everyone in the society confirms such principles of justice on the basis of reason. After these two stages, the society will be in order. Rawls followed Kant, and after"a Theory of Justice", especially in"Political Liberalism", he revised his theory to keep a distance with Kant. But the influence from Kant remained. There is some inheriting and revision between Kant and Rawls, so it is possible to make a kantian interpretation on Rawls'theory .Our perspective is the comparison between Kant and Rawls. From this perspective, we can understand Rawls'theory and his dilemma more precisely, and Rawls'dilemma can also be partly mediated by this kantian understanding.