On the Priority of Rawls’ Liberty

In contemporary Western political philosophy,Rawls is the most important figure,and his term “justice” holds a very important position in Western political philosophy.The concept of “justice” proposed by him is a universalist view of justice,that is,in the entire human society,everyone enjoys the same equal right to freedom,everyone has the same rights and obligations to pursue happiness,dignity,and welfare,and everyone enjoys basic freedom rights,which is the basic meaning of Rawls’ “justice”.Rawls believed that justice is the establishment of a fundamental system of freedom in society,and the construction of a social freedom system first needs to address the priority of freedom.In “The Theory of Justice”,Rawls proposed defense arguments for the priority of freedom in three aspects,namely,the theory of self-esteem,the theory of equal freedom of conscience,and the theory of hierarchy of interests.However,Rawls’ three level arguments did not give basic freedom dictionary priority.The reconstruction of the Kantian concept of self-discipline based on the hierarchy of interests provides a constructivist interpretation of the principle of justice.In “Political Liberalism”,Rawls further demonstrated the principle of justice,and the argumentation of political liberalism was clearly influenced by Hegel and gradually deviated from Kant.Hegel’s philosophy provided a systematic framework for Rawls to conceive a theory of justice.Undoubtedly,Rawls’ modern freedom theory has become a theory that completely transcends Kantism and Hegelism and provides a reasonable explanation for the stability of democratic constitutional society.