Rawls On The Priority Of The Right

It is generally believed that the debate between deontology and teleology mainly focuses on the relationship of the right and the good,or exactly the priority of the right over the good.In the past two thousand years of history of moral philosophy,the teleology has played a main role.Besides,it lives in our social world and tells us what to do in our daily life.As for the deontology,although there was an original version in the medieval Christian ethics,it wouldn't challenge the teleology until the modern times,especially since Kant.As a self-conscious Kantian,Rawls agrees with the idea of the priority of the right and gives a better justification for deontological liberalism including its conception of justice.Main Ideas of this article is as follows: firstly,I will give a basic introduction of classical teleology and deontology,so as to show the theoretic background of Rawls on the priority of the right.Secondly,I'm going to reconstruct and comment Rawls' justification from five aspects,which are the priority,the contract theory,the conception of self,the neutrality and the congruence.On one hand,Rawls' reflective equilibrium does well in dealing with the relationship of the right and the good;on the other hand,whether Rawls or his critics fail to smooth the relationship of the public and the private because of the traditional model of deontology—teleology.Finally,I'll demonstrate what challenges and enlightenments the "intervention" of new Confucianism may bring in the debate.Not only the Confucian defend the priority of the righteousness and advocate a personality of gentleman which transcends secular interests;but also they think the transcendence won't happen in the "vacuum",because it is subject to certain social and historical context.Being different from the western theories,the immanent transcendence and personalism are not only the characteristics as well as the advantages of the Confucianism.