Topic: Political Liberalism Lecturer:Prof. Wan Junren Discussants:Prof. He Baogang, Prof. Wang Haiming, Prof. Liao Shenbai, Prof .Sheng Hong, Prof. Zhang Shuguang
At the 378th Unirule bi-weekly symposium, Prof. Wan Junren, Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University delivered a speech entitled “Political Liberalism”. Prof. Wan has been a visit Professor at Harvard University in 1993 during which time he became a friend of the great philosopher John Rawls. Prof. Wan is also the main disseminator of Rawl’s idea in China. He himself translated the “A Theory of Justice” and “Political Liberalism” into Chinese. Prof. Wan first introduced the idea of “Institutional Justice” and the first and second principle of justice. Then he introduced how Rawls addressed the most common criticism leveled at A Theory of Justice in political liberalism― the criticism that the principles of justice were simply an alternative systematic conception of justice that was superior to utilitarianism or any other comprehensive theory. Rawls tries to show that his two principles of justice, properly understood, form a "theory of the right" (as opposed to a theory of the good) which would be supported by all reasonable individuals, even under conditions of reasonable pluralism. The mechanism by which he demonstrates this is called "overlapping consensus".
