Reciprocity, Self-interest, and Citizen Virtue in Justice as Fairness

Abstract Does John Rawls’s justice as fairness require virtuous citizens to eschew self-interested motivation in favor of motivation by the aim to promote justice when making decisions about their labor or investment participation in their society’s economy? Analyzing Rawls’s ideas of advantage and of legitimate ends and tracing the purpose and implementation of his difference principle, the article shows how G. A. Cohen’s critique of Rawls’s allowance of productive incentives reflects misunderstandings of Rawls’s theoretical aims and of the fundamental liberalism of Rawls’s well-ordered society. In that society, political civility permits making such decisions by appeal to each citizen’s self-interested aims and values.