Abstract

Political philosophers since Hobbes often construe social life in terms of a conflict which is rarely reconciled, but rather is accommodated in politics or adjudicated in law. Yet many think that morality pertains even in a formalized situation of attenuated agreement. Following Rawls, this morality is held to be a minimal, incipient, rudimentary form of justice--in Rawls's case, fairness. I argue from Kierkegaard and Habermas that a minimal, incipient, rudimentary form of love--namely, hospitality, the welcome of strangers--is equiprimordial to fairness in establishing the basic social situation.