There Are Infinitely Many Variations

I Live In A Country Where 90 Or 95 Percent Of The People Profess To Be Religious, And Maybe They Are Religious, Though My Experience Of Religion Suggests That Very Few People Are Actually Religious In More Than A Conventional Sense.

Now The Good Of Political Life Is A Great Political Good. It Is Not A Secular Good Specified By A Comprehensive Doctrine Like Those Of Kant Or Mill. You Could Characterize This Political Good As The Good Of Free And Equal Citizens Recognizing The Duty Of Civility To One Another: The Duty To Give Citizens Public Reasons For One's Political Actions.

I Have Tried To Set Forth A Theory That Enables Us To Understand And To Assess These Feelings About The Primacy Of Justice. Justice As Fairness Is The Outcome: It Articulates These Opinions And Supports Their General Tendency.

Justice Is The First Virtue Of Social Institutions, As Truth Is Of Systems Of Thought. A Theory However Elegant And Economical Must Be Rejected Or Revised If It Is Untrue; Likewise Laws And Institutions No Matter How Efficient And Well-arranged Must Be Reformed Or Abolished If They Are Unjust.

Ideally Citizens Are To Think Of Themselves As If They Were Legislators And Ask Themselves What Statutes, Supported By What Reasons Satisfying The Criterion Of Reciprocity, They Would Think Is Most Reasonable To Enact.