In moral and political philosophy, this addresses whether principles of justice can be justified independently of substantive conceptions of the good, contrasting a voluntarist/liberal-neutral view of the person and of rights with a narrative conception that grounds obligations of solidarity and membership. It distinguishes a relativist way of tying justice to the good (deferring to whatever a community's traditions hold) from a non-relativist way (grounding rights in the intrinsic moral worth of the ends they serve), and argues that reasoning about the good is unavoidable in disputes about justice and rights. It further situates this claim within the method of reflective equilibrium — moving dialectically between considered judgments about particular cases and general principles — as a mode of moral reasoning applicable to both questions of justice and of the good life.
In moral and political philosophy, this addresses whether principles of justice can be justified independently of substantive conceptions of the good, contrasting a voluntarist/liberal-neutral view o…