The Political Ideals of Justice as Fairness

Abstract

This chapter begins to show how the changes Rawls made between Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism—listed in the Introduction—respond to the failures he found in his arguments for congruence. The chapter lays out what is referred to here as the “basic stability argument” found in Political Liberalism, an argument intended—like the stability arguments of Theory of Justice—that the well-ordered society would not be undermined by a generalized prisoner's dilemma. It explains subtle changes Rawls made in his discussion of moral development and shows why the notion of congruence, which bulked so large in Rawls's early treatment of stability, plays so little role in his later one.