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The good of political life is the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another and supporting the institutions of a constitutional regime.

John Rawls

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John Rawls
Age: 81 †
Born: 1921
Born: February 21
Died: 2002
Died: November 24
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Baltimore
Maryland
Rawls
John Bordley Rawls
Free
Constitutional
Political
Supporting
Another
Regimes
Good
Recognizing
Life
Institutions
Citizens
Equal
Civility
Duty
Regime

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If you compare the United States with Europe, my view is that what happened in Europe is that the church became deeply distrusted by people, because it sided with the monarchs. It instituted the Inquisition and became part of the repressive state apparatus. That never happened here. We don't have that history.
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A political conception just applies to the basic structure of a society, its institutions, constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice and property, and so on.
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A political conception covers the right to vote, the political virtues, and the good of political life, but it doesn't intend to cover anything else.
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There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.
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An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.
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Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.
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I live in a country where 90 or 95 percent of the people profess to be religious, and maybe they are religious, though my experience of religion suggests that very few people are actually religious in more than a conventional sense.
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Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.
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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.
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Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.
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Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.
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The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.
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An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty... A person's right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself.
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A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations, one or more of them, are excessive. If these expectations were decreased, the situation of the less favored would be improved.
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There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions.
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No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
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The idea of public reason isn't about the right answers to all these questions, but about the kinds of reasons that they ought to be answered by.
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The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.
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Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.
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Justice as fairness provides what we want.
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