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1 results

  • 16 - Religious Pluralism and Social Unions

  • from Part IV - Pluralism, Democracy, and the Future of Justice as Fairness
  • Edited by Paul Weithman, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book:
    Rawls’s <i>A Theory of Justice</i> at 50
    Published online:
    20 July 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023, pp 277-295

  • Summary

    Rawls’s argument that a well-ordered society would be a social union of social unions is crucial to his larger argument for stability. The former argument depends upon what I call “the security assumption.” I contend that reasonable religious pluralism casts doubt on the assumption and on the argument which appeals to it. Seeing why the dubitability of the security assumption makes the idea of a social union of social unions non-viable, we can come to a better understanding of the development of Rawls’s thought. Equally if not more important is the relevance of the security assumption for contemporary politics. That assumption identifies a condition that must be satisfied if members of a liberal democracy are to find their collective activity as citizens inherently valuable. Failure to satisfy that condition suggests why some members of liberal democracies as we know them deny the inherent value of relations with their fellow citizens.