Rawls had misgivings about the account of stability he gave in A Theory of Justice. It ignored “the fact of reasonable pluralism,” that is, that the social contract has to attract people who disagree about fundamental values of the kind embraced in “comprehensive” doctrines. The contract doctrine welcomes reasonable comprehensive doctrines but forbids the use of state power to promote a comprehensive liberalism, which he confessed he had assumed. There is also a “fact of oppression,” that no state can stabilize itself by imposing a comprehensive doctrine without resorting to the tactics of Torquemada or Stalin. A “liberal principle of legitimacy” forbids this. One must hope for an “overlapping consensus” of reasonable, comprehensive doctrines to settle upon a “political conception of justice.” Rawls’s concessions may lead even further, amounting to a “fact of justice pluralism,” that is, that there are multiple, incompatible, but equally reasonable political conceptions of justice – including ones that reject political equality as Rawls conceives it. Rawls admitted there was a “family” of such conceptions but insisted that each must satisfy a “criterion of reciprocity.” This chapter ekes out Rawls’s published remarks to construct a “reciprocity” argument for fair value, complementing the “stability” argument of Chapter 15.

We explore the motivation for a public reason standpoint that comes from what Rawls calls the “burdens of judgment,” challenges in interpreting our moral lives that generate a plurality of interpretations. These burdens and the implied fact of reasonable pluralism motivate a public reason view. Defenders of comprehensive doctrines are not asked to abandon talk about truth or correctness, but to realize that competent reasoners invariably embrace different doctrines. This approach suits an era of global interconnectedness in the face of diversity but also faces stiff resistance. We then connect the Rawlsian account of public reason for the domestic case to the grounds-of-justice approach. The key idea is that the grounds can be understood as being included in an overlapping consensus. Then, Rawls’s construction for public reason carries over to the global level. This development of global public reason also completes the account of the political philosopher from Part I.