John Rawls and the Method of Reflective Equilibrium in Ethics

In his discussion of the old problem of induction, Nelson Goodman refers to something that was later called the method of reflective equilibrium by John Rawls and was employed by him in order to infer a theory of justice in the domain of political philosophy. He claimed that in a liberal society, the selection of a particular principle regarding justice requires an arbitrary preference. To solve the problem, Rawls considers an initial situation through the developments of which people come to an agreement over the normative principles of justice. For him, these principles should be reconciled with our moral judgments concerning particular cases via the method of reflective equilibrium. The employment of this method came to be criticized by some philosophers and defended by others. It seems that ethical problems, and in particular, problems of applied ethics, cannot be solved only by an appeal to moral theories and abstract moral principles. Thus despite many controversies about this method, it is so useful in the field of ethics, and in particular, applied ethics, that some people have claimed that it is the only useful method in ethics.