Abstract

Although Rawls insists that his argument for his theory of justice neither addresses nor requires that we settle in advance any of the deep questions of philosophy, there are nonetheless more subtle ways in which his work may bear on such questions. The article explores how Rawls’s work may advance our thinking on the general philosophical question of how language affects thought, by enabling us to assess the conceptual consequences of two alternative metaphors for describing our activity when we engage in critical self-reflection. The effects on our thinking of our common use of the metaphor of ‘stepping back’ to describe this activity are contrasted with those of an alternative metaphor suggested by Rawls’s work. The resulting conclusions are then employed to illuminate Rawls’s reply to an interesting objection to his theory raised by Michael Sandel.