Why it's beneficial to be just, in a just society, and how this congruence helps make justice stable

What is it about?

In the third part of A Theory of Justice, Rawls argued that in a society ordered according to his conception of ‘justice as fairness’, it would be beneficial to have a sense of justice, and that this congruence between justice and the good would help make justice-as-fairness stable. The purpose of this entry in the Rawls Lexicon is to explain what congruence is, why it matters, and why Rawls thought that justice-as-fairness was congruent, or in any case more congruent than utilitarianism. It also explains the controversy about whether the argument from congruence is necessary, and how Rawls’s dissatisfaction with his case for congruence eventually led him to the ideas of political liberalism and overlapping consensus. The worry about congruence can be brought out by supposing that our preferred conception of justice turns out not to be sufficiently congruent. Why should we have to adjust our conception just so that some people who don’t care enough about justice can find self-interested reasons for being just? Demonstrating congruence either involves defining justice down, or is superfluous, it may seem. However, people may be committed to justice but tempted to deviate, and if justice is limited by an expectation of reciprocity, too much deviation will make it unstable. The argument from congruence may then be seen as an attempt to provide assurance about the conduct of others in a context of mutually recognized moral imperfection.

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Why is it important?

The topics of congruence and stability have received less attention than Rawls's more famous arguments about the original position, the arbitrariness of natural talent, the distinction between legitimate entitlement and desert, antiperfectionism, etc. The entry brings out the importance of reciprocity in these arguments. Motivation by reciprocity helps explain why justice-as-fairness is stable, but it also explains why people need assurance about the conduct of others, and so why it may be important for me to know that (in a just society) others have both principled and self-interested reasons for being just.