Some Rawlsian Terminology:
Primary Goods for Rawls are social or natural.
Social Primary Goods are goods that are directly
distributed by social institutions, e.g., income and
wealth, opportunities and powers, rights and
liberties.
Natural Primary Goods are distributed by nature,
e.g., health, intelligence, vigour, imagination,
natural talents. These are affected by social
institutions but not directly distributed by them.
These are simply natural facts. What is just and
unjust is the way that social institutions deal with
these facts.
Persons have 2 moral powers: 1) the capacity to
formulate a rational conception of the good life
and 2) the capacity to act, understand and apply
the requirements of justice. These moral powers
enable each person to be a free and responsible
agent taking part in social cooperation.
A Comprehensive Doctrine is a belief or valuesystem (religious, moral, philosophical) which sets
out a whole way of living and giving meaning to a
life. Comprehensive doctrines give their adherents
a program for pursuing what is good, valuable, or
what makes life worth living. They provide ideals
of personal character and ideals of friendship and
of familial and associational relationships. There
is a wide variety of comprehensive doctrines and
people may buy in or out of them to various
degrees. Rawls calls this pluralism.
Note:
Rawls is
against
imposing
one
comprehensive doctrine of the Good Life on
society. Reasonable Pluralism should flourish w/n
a basic framework of political liberties that would
best allow each person to pursue his/her unique
conception of the Good Life.