Constructivism, Facts, and Moral Justification

Abstract

This chapter responds to G. A. Cohen’s criticisms of Rawls’s reliance upon social and psychological facts about humans to argue for his principles of justice. Cohen contends that such facts are irrelevant to the justification of fundamental principles of justice and that Rawls’s difference principle is not a fundamental principle but a principle of regulation to accommodate injustice due to human selfishness. I respond to these criticisms by discussing three reasons why the first principles of a moral conception of justice should be “fact-sensitive”: First, a conception of justice should be compatible with our moral and psychological capacities. Second, a conception of justice should provide principles for practical reasoning and supply a public basis for justification across conceptions of the good. Third, a moral conception should not frustrate but affirm the pursuit of the human good, including the exercise and development of our moral capacities and sense of justice.