| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 哲學研究所 === 96 === The purpose of this thesis is to elucidate how John Rawls forges social unity amid the diversity in the modern constitutional democracy by the concept of “overlapping consensus.” Having inherited the spirit from the political liberalism, Rawls offers an account of “justice as fairness,” claiming that the principle of justice justified by fair procedure could be accepted by all citizens. The theory of justice based on Kantian’s ideas, however, fails to achieve the aim. In order to overcome the difficulty, Rawls in his later work focuses on the diversity in the modern constitutional democracy. Due to the fact of reasonable pluralism, Rawls endorses that political conception of justice as the most adequate conception of justice that is not only independent of all reasonable comprehensive doctrines but also bases on fundamental intuitive ideas. Rawls further claims that political conception of justice could be overlapping consensus between citizens who hold different reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Many philosophers such as Jürgen Habermas argue that Rawls gave up doing what a philosopher should do for he didn’t justify political conception of justice as philosophically true. However, Rawls defends that his theoretical purpose is different from traditional political philosophers. The justification of political conception of justice made by overlapping consensus is “public justification by political society.” Therefore, the idea of overlapping could be the public basis of modern constitutional democracy and could forge social unity.
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