Right And Good Complementarity

In the relationship between right and good,claiming the priority of right has been one of the main signs of liberalism. Rawls is no exception. His theory of justice was criticized by libertarianism and communitarianism. The former emphasizes the absolute priority of right and discontents on Rawls’ s concession; the latter insists that good has priority over right, communitarians believe that liberals ignore the importance of community for personal identity and cultural traditions. However, the relationship between right and good is not as simple as it seems in Rawls’ s theory, the priority of right over good is only one side of Rawls’ s political philosophy, the complement of right and good is the other side which is indispensable. The importance of the former is self-evident, but the latter is often neglected. Complementary relationship between them can be summarized as “right draws the limits and good shows the point” in Rawls’ s theory. Finding a clear and coherent point of view from the writings of Rawls, the theme of this paper is to seek more comprehensive p resentation of the relationship between right and good in the political philosophy of Rawls.