John Rawls

In this article, it will be shown that philosophers/theoreticians of justice, such as John Rawls, are engaged in a kind of performative contradiction, since despite their implicit call for justice, their mere academic activities in developing a theory of justice, does not really help the cause of justice in society. Then by referring to thoughts of Heidegger, Levinas, and Nietzsche, among others, it will be shown that although the struggle to achieve social justice is necessary and has the highest priority, it is an impossible task; and yet human beings are existentially obliged to engage in this unavoidable task. Finally, it will be shown as why this "task of social justice" will be best achieved as, what could be called, "authentic development" or horizontal development at the bottom, and playing chess with the powers that be. In defining "authentic development," it will be compared with what Denis Goulet calls by the same name; where he defines the desired development with its results, rather than its process.

John Rawls introduced the idea of public reason as a precondition of decision-making processes based on justice in a well-ordered society. There are critics, however, who doubted whether the idea is consistent with deliberative democracy. While Rawls saw his idea of reasonable overlapping consensus as an outcome of public reasoning, his suggested political liberalism seems to be morally too thick to work as the basis of such a consensus in culturally diverse societies. Here, through a critical evaluation of Rawls’s view, I try to use his idea of public reason by reference to the brilliant distinction he makes between ‘the rational’ and ‘the reasonable’. I show that it is the latter, which defines the nature of ‘the political’, that could be employed for the relationship between different cultural identities of a society, governed by political principles justified by referring to thin or non-moral arguments that in turns allow liberal as well as non-liberal cultural communities to participate in a just framework of social cooperation. Moreover, I argue that this revised interpretation of Rawlsian overlapping consensus can help us in the democratic assessment of constitutions and revising them in order to became more legitimate to citizens. Using this theoretical framework, and as the Islamic Republic is claimed to represent a religious democracy, I suggest that the criterion of public reason can be used in assessing the Constitution of the Islamic Republic and, therefore, highlights the necessary revisions for achieving more democratic basic structures of the Iranian society.

Justice has always been the most basic issue and the most important ideal of man since the beginning of civilization on earth, and for this reason, humans have tried to turn it into reality. Parallel to this importance, the thinkers of every age have tried to explain the limits and gaps and realize it. Because the lack of justice in the society causes the emergence of discrimination, oppression, corruption, and the lack of public consensus, and a society based on injustice and heterogeneity emerges. As a result, in order to pass from this society and move towards a healthy society where justice is based, idealistic thoughts are created to reach the desired society. This creates schools, movements and revolutions. This process shows the importance of the fact that in the process of the evolution of civilization, human beings have always had the concern of justice in front of them and it is not limited to a specific group or nation. People everywhere and at all times have the desire to achieve justice. In this article, while examining the origin of justice in the thoughts of John Rawls and Allameh Tabatabaei, this concept was compared from the perspective of two thinkers. Rawls from the contemporary West and Allameh Tabatabaei from contemporary Islam are among the most prominent philosophers and thinkers in the world who look at the concept of justice with different intellectual bases. But their theoretical output has similarities in the field of the concept of justice. In this article, using the hermeneutic recovery method, the challenges in the thoughts of Rawls and Allameh Tabatabaei in the field of justice were investigated.