Abstract

This chapter sketches a reading that confirms John Rawls's view that the stability argument of Part Three of Theory of Justice (TJ) was crucial for the success of TJ as a whole, that it was indeed flawed, and that fundamental ideas of Political Liberalism (PL) can be traced to the wide‐ranging consequences of recognizing the flaw in that argument. In Rawls's political liberalism, one can find at least two accounts of the way in which stability considerations enter into justificatory arguments – one repairs the account in TJ and is similarly structured, while another pushes political liberalism in a more radical direction. The chapter briefly discusses how the thin theory of the good is employed in Rawls's stability analysis. It is not “the fact of pluralism” but the “fact of reasonable pluralism” that motivates Rawls's political turn; reasonable pluralism is the result of our best exercise of free practical reason.