Rawls on Overlapping Consensus: Justice in a Pluralistic Society

The Quote

"An overlapping consensus is a consensus in which the same political conception of justice is affirmed by the opposing religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines."

— John Rawls, Political Liberalism (1993)

Historical Context

John Rawls published Political Liberalism in 1993, more than two decades after the publication of A Theory of Justice (1971), which had established him as the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century. The later book was a response to a problem that Rawls had come to see as unresolved in his earlier work: the problem of stability. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls had argued that the principles of justice as fairness — the principles that free and equal persons would choose in the original position — would be stable because they would be affirmed by citizens who had developed a sense of justice. But Rawls came to realize that this argument assumed something that could not be taken for granted: that citizens in a modern democratic society would share a common comprehensive moral doctrine.

The passage quoted here is the central concept of Political Liberalism. Rawls's argument is that a modern democratic society is characterized by "reasonable pluralism" — the fact that citizens hold a diversity of incompatible but reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines. In such a society, the stability of a just political order cannot depend on citizens sharing a common comprehensive doctrine, because they do not and will not. The alternative is an "overlapping consensus" — a consensus on the principles of justice that is affirmed by each of the reasonable comprehensive doctrines from within its own perspective.

The context of the late twentieth century shaped Rawls's argument. The end of the Cold War, the rise of identity politics, and the increasing diversity of Western societies had made the question of pluralism urgent. The debate between liberals and communitarians had raised the question of whether liberal political theory could adequately account for the diversity of values and forms of life in modern societies. Rawls's answer was a new conception of political liberalism — a liberalism that is not based on a comprehensive moral doctrine but on a political conception of justice that can be the object of an overlapping consensus among reasonable citizens.

Philosophical Interpretation

The concept of overlapping consensus is Rawls's solution to the problem of stability in a pluralistic society. The problem is this: a just society must be stable — it must be able to reproduce itself over time through the free consent of its citizens. But if citizens hold different and incompatible comprehensive doctrines — different views about the meaning of life, the nature of the good, the truth of religion — then how can they all affirm the same principles of justice? The answer is that they can affirm the principles of justice for different reasons. The religious believer can affirm the principles of justice as a requirement of her faith; the secular humanist can affirm them as a requirement of his moral philosophy; the skeptic can affirm them as a reasonable basis for social cooperation. The consensus is "overlapping" because it is the same principles that are affirmed, but from different perspectives and for different reasons.

The concept of overlapping consensus is connected to the distinction that Rawls draws between the "political" and the "comprehensive." The political conception of justice is a freestanding conception — it does not depend on any particular comprehensive doctrine for its justification. It is a political conception because it is designed to apply to the basic structure of society — the fundamental institutions of the political, social, and economic order — and because it is presented as a reasonable basis for public agreement among citizens who hold different comprehensive doctrines.

The toleration that the overlapping consensus embodies is not a mere modus vivendi — a temporary truce between competing interests that will break down as soon as the balance of power shifts. It is a principled agreement that is affirmed by citizens for moral reasons. The stability of an overlapping consensus is "stability for the right reasons" — not stability based on the balance of power or the accident of convergent interests but stability based on the principled agreement of citizens who affirm the political conception of justice as a requirement of their own reasonable comprehensive doctrines.

Related Concepts

The concept of overlapping consensus is central to Rawls's project of political liberalism. It is connected to the concepts of public reason — the idea that citizens should be able to justify their political decisions to one another in terms that all can reasonably accept — and the idea of the reasonable — the idea that citizens are willing to propose and abide by fair terms of cooperation even when they disagree about the ultimate ends of life.

The debate about the possibility and desirability of an overlapping consensus is one of the central debates in contemporary political philosophy. Critics argue that the concept of overlapping consensus is too thin to provide the basis for a just and stable society, that it cannot accommodate the depth of moral disagreement in modern societies, and that it imposes an unrealistic burden on citizens who hold comprehensive doctrines that are not compatible with the political conception of justice. Defenders argue that the concept of overlapping consensus is the most promising framework for understanding how justice, pluralism, and democracy can be reconciled in a modern society.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "John Rawls." Covers Rawls's contributions to political philosophy, the concept of justice as fairness, and the development of political liberalism.
2. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; expanded ed. 2005). The primary source of the quoted passage.
3. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Rawls: Political Liberalism." An accessible overview of Rawls's argument and its significance.