Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- 195 Sandel, Michael
- 196 Scanlon, T. M.
- 197 Self-interest
- 198 Self-respect
- 199 Sen, Amartya
- 200 Sense of justice
- 201 Sidgwick, Henry
- 202 Sin
- 203 Social choice theory
- 204 Social contract
- 205 Social minimum
- 206 Social union
- 207 Socialism
- 208 Society of peoples
- 209 Soper, Philip
- 210 Sovereignty
- 211 Stability
- 212 Statesman and duty of statesmanship
- 213 Strains of commitment
- 214 Supreme Court and judicial review
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
211 - Stability
from S
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations for Rawls’s texts
- Introduction
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- R
- S
- 195 Sandel, Michael
- 196 Scanlon, T. M.
- 197 Self-interest
- 198 Self-respect
- 199 Sen, Amartya
- 200 Sense of justice
- 201 Sidgwick, Henry
- 202 Sin
- 203 Social choice theory
- 204 Social contract
- 205 Social minimum
- 206 Social union
- 207 Socialism
- 208 Society of peoples
- 209 Soper, Philip
- 210 Sovereignty
- 211 Stability
- 212 Statesman and duty of statesmanship
- 213 Strains of commitment
- 214 Supreme Court and judicial review
- T
- U
- W
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Rawls consistently maintains that a theory of justice must be shown to be stable. Rawls famously declares that justice is “the first virtue of social institutions” (TJ 3). But after explaining that the goal of his work is to vindicate this conviction by showing that there can be a set of just principles that could regulate the actions and institutions of a well-ordered society, Rawls goes on to note that such a conception of justice is “not the only prerequisite for a viable human community. There are other fundamental social problems, in particular those of coordination, efficiency, and stability” (TJ 5). Of these three, stability poses the most challenging problem for Rawls’s theory of justice.
“It is evident,” continues Rawls, “that these three problems are connected with that of justice.” But Rawls’s two principles of justice address the first two problems directly, by explaining how the goals of coordination and efficiency are to be made consistent with the priority of justice. According to the first principle, individuals can justly coordinate their plans of action by recognizing a scheme of equal basic liberties which allow each person to pursue a conception of the good. According to the second principle, a society can justly pursue efficiency by permitting a scheme of competitive economic incentives, and their resulting inequalities, only to the extent that this scheme improves the situation of the worst off. But nothing in the two principles shows that Rawls’s proposed scheme of social cooperation must be stable – which for Rawls means that the scheme “must be more or less regularly complied with and its basic rules willingly acted upon; and when infractions occur, stabilizing forces should exist that prevent further violations and tend to restore the arrangement” (TJ 6).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon , pp. 804 - 810Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014