Rawlsian Relativism and Background Theories

Abstract

Throughout John Rawls' A Theory of Justice (TJ) 1 there is tacit, but strong, reliance upon notion of intuition that was first developed in an earlier paper entitled, Outline of Decision Procedure for Ethics.* It is the role of intuition in decision procedure for ethics and, specifically, in the method of reflective equilibrium that is attacked by Peter Singer, R. M. Hare, and Richard Brandt. Attacks that, if successful, would reduce the Rawlsian scheme an undesirable form of relativism. This relativism reduces an internal test of coherence, where there are no external principles which we can appeal, no external standards by which we can judge the principles and intuitions themselves. Singer questions why the moral judgments we intuitively make are legitimate fixed points against which theories can be tested. Why not, he asks, make the opposite assumption, i.e., that such judgments are likely to derive from discarded religious systems, from warped views of sex and bodily functions, or from customs necessary for the survival of the group of social and economic circumstances that now lie in the distant past? 1 Hare claims that Rawls advocates narrow subjectivism that is the result of grounding his theoretical structure on a cosy unanimity in people'8 considered judgments.*