John Rawls: Transition from A Theory of Justice to Political Liberalism

Transition in John Rawls’s political theory contains some positions which he choose after his first work, “A Theory of Justice”. This transition came from unsatisfactory and internal incompatibility that Rawls started to modify them. The changes applied by him completed in “Political Liberalism”. The understanding of this transition would be possible by referring to the problem of stability. According to Rawls, stability was essential for social cooperation and constituting of well-ordered society. Rawls at the beginning believed that stability will come true intrinsically by its elements, sense of justice and congruence argument. But gradually after relinquishing the moral viewpoints and accepting the fact of reasonable pluralism and importance of political values, he concluded that the sole acceptance of principles of justice by citizens does not lead to the stability and well-ordered society. Instead, rawls with a different reading of stability and replacing overlapping consensus rather than congruence argument recognized comprehensive and plural doctorines of citizens. So, citizens could just in well-ordered society by a framework of real autonomy.