Key Arguments

• Immediately after criticizing the purely conscientious act doctrine, Rawls contrasts his view: 'But for one who understands and accepts the contract doctrine, the sentiment of justice is not a different desire from that to act on principles that rational individuals would consent to in an initial situation which gives everyone equal representation as a moral person.'
• He adds an equivalent Kantian characterization: 'Nor is it different from wanting to act in accordance with principles that express men’s nature as free and equal rational beings.'
• He emphasizes that the same principles satisfy all these descriptions: 'The principles of justice answer to these descriptions and this fact allows us to give an acceptable interpretation to the sense of justice.'
• He claims that, given his theory, we can understand the regulative role of moral sentiments: 'In the light of the theory of justice we understand how the moral sentiments can be regulative in our life and have the role attributed to them by the formal conditions on moral principles.'
• He explicates what it means to be governed by these principles: 'Being governed by these principles means that we want to live with others on terms that everyone would recognize as fair from a perspective that all would accept as reasonable. The ideal of persons cooperating on this basis exercises a natural attraction upon our affections.'

Source Quotes

Although such a preference might exist, to make it regulative of the basic structure of society is utterly capricious; and no less so because it is masked by a fortunate necessary connection with reasonable grounds for judgments of right. But for one who understands and accepts the contract doctrine, the sentiment of justice is not a different desire from that to act on principles that rational individuals would consent to in an initial situation which gives everyone equal representation as a moral person. Nor is it different from wanting to act in accordance with principles that express men’s nature as free and equal rational beings.

But for one who understands and accepts the contract doctrine, the sentiment of justice is not a different desire from that to act on principles that rational individuals would consent to in an initial situation which gives everyone equal representation as a moral person. Nor is it different from wanting to act in accordance with principles that express men’s nature as free and equal rational beings. The principles of justice answer to these descriptions and this fact allows us to give an acceptable interpretation to the sense of justice.

Nor is it different from wanting to act in accordance with principles that express men’s nature as free and equal rational beings. The principles of justice answer to these descriptions and this fact allows us to give an acceptable interpretation to the sense of justice. In the light of the theory of justice we understand how the moral sentiments can be regulative in our life and have the role attributed to them by the formal conditions on moral principles.

The principles of justice answer to these descriptions and this fact allows us to give an acceptable interpretation to the sense of justice. In the light of the theory of justice we understand how the moral sentiments can be regulative in our life and have the role attributed to them by the formal conditions on moral principles. Being governed by these principles means that we want to live with others on terms that everyone would recognize as fair from a perspective that all would accept as reasonable.

In the light of the theory of justice we understand how the moral sentiments can be regulative in our life and have the role attributed to them by the formal conditions on moral principles. Being governed by these principles means that we want to live with others on terms that everyone would recognize as fair from a perspective that all would accept as reasonable. The ideal of persons cooperating on this basis exercises a natural attraction upon our affections.

Key Concepts

• for one who understands and accepts the contract doctrine, the sentiment of justice is not a different desire from that to act on principles that rational individuals would consent to in an initial situation which gives everyone equal representation as a moral person.
• Nor is it different from wanting to act in accordance with principles that express men’s nature as free and equal rational beings.
• The principles of justice answer to these descriptions and this fact allows us to give an acceptable interpretation to the sense of justice.
• we understand how the moral sentiments can be regulative in our life and have the role attributed to them by the formal conditions on moral principles.
• we want to live with others on terms that everyone would recognize as fair from a perspective that all would accept as reasonable.

Context

Immediately following Rawls’s critique of Ross’s doctrine in §72, where he positively characterizes the sense of justice in contractual and Kantian terms and explains its regulative role within justice as fairness.