Can we build a just society without agreeing on the good life?

 

A Shared Moral Foundation Without Moral Consensus

No society or institution is morally neutral. Laws, markets, technologies, and public policies always embody choices about whose interests matter, how risks and resources are distributed, and which forms of life receive recognition. Presenting such choices as purely technical does not eliminate normativity; it merely conceals it from democratic scrutiny. Justice should therefore be understood as the quality of a social and institutional order insofar as it creates, distributes, and keeps the conditions for human development correctable.

This concept shifts attention from static distribution to developmental opportunity, from isolated individuals to relationships of dependence, and from fixed principles to arrangements that remain open to criticism and revision. Justice concerns not only what people possess, but what they can become within the social, epistemic, material, and ecological conditions shaping their lives.

Pluralistic societies face a fundamental dilemma. A morally “thin” framework may provide too little guidance to challenge injustice, while a comprehensive doctrine may impose one conception of the good life on everyone[1]. A defensible middle position combines a universal moral threshold with a positive orientation toward human becoming. It is explicitly normative without prescribing a complete or uniform way of life. The shared foundation proposed here is political rather than metaphysical. Citizens need not agree on the ultimate source of dignity, the meaning of a good life, or a comprehensive moral doctrine. They need only be able to justify a common constitutional minimum to one another as free and equal participants.

The universal threshold protects three fundamental conditions[2]. The first is human dignity: people must not be degraded, dehumanized, or treated merely as instruments of economic, political, technological, or cultural objectives. Dignity requires both protection against arbitrary treatment and institutions that recognize people as full participants.

The second condition is developmental opportunity. People need material security, physical safety, education, healthcare, reliable knowledge, social recognition, participation, and protection against structural domination. Formal rights are inadequate when insecurity, discrimination, epistemic manipulation, or unequal power makes them impossible to exercise in practice[3].

The third condition is non-destructive transmission between generations[4]. Societies inevitably pass institutions, values, inequalities, knowledge, and ecological conditions to those who follow. Justice therefore requires preventing the reproduction of exclusion and humiliation while protecting the biosphere on which future development depends. Ecological limits are not external restrictions on justice but constitutive conditions of any durable social order.

Above this minimum, human becoming provides a directional criterion. Institutions should be assessed according to whether they enlarge or restrict the ability of people and communities to learn, reflect, participate, form relationships, revise themselves, and act responsibly. This is not simply an ideal of private self-realization. It concerns the collective and institutional conditions under which people can become responsible, reciprocal participants in society.

The combination of a universal threshold and contextual realization avoids both relativism and moral imperialism. Different cultures and societies may organize welfare, participation, community, and ecological responsibility in different ways. Context cannot, however, justify systematic harm, humiliation, exclusion, domination, or the destruction of future developmental conditions. Contextual practices must remain open to contestation by those affected and must be evaluated with attention to power: apparent cultural consent may reflect coercion, dependency, or the exclusion of critical voices.

This position retains Rawls’s concern for fair procedures, equal standing, and pluralistic justification but rejects the idea that procedural fairness alone is sufficient. Abstract procedures can overlook the social formation of individuals, unequal access to knowledge, material dependency, and ecological limits. Sandel’s critique correctly shows that politics cannot be separated from moral assumptions, but moral reflection still requires institutional boundaries that prevent it from becoming exclusionary or totalizing. A more adequate position therefore combines procedural safeguards with substantive minimum conditions, relational analysis, ecological responsibility, and institutional correctability[5].

Plurality is not a temporary problem to be eliminated. Modern societies contain lasting differences in religion, culture, knowledge, identity, social position, and conceptions of justice. Without a shared foundation, however, plurality can deteriorate into fragmented information environments, political paralysis, and unregulated struggles for dominance. Sustainable plurality requires a minimal common basis: shared protection of dignity and developmental opportunity, credible knowledge infrastructures, mutual recognition, and institutions capable of regulating conflict.

Correctability transforms plurality into a potential source of learning. Competing perspectives can expose blind spots and institutional failures, provided that claims remain open to examination, conflicts can enter legal and democratic channels, and opponents continue to recognize one another as legitimate participants. Power asymmetries must be addressed because groups with greater resources and institutional access are usually better positioned to define problems, shape public knowledge, and demand correction.

Across religious, secular, Indigenous, and philosophical traditions, one can identify partially overlapping commitments to human worth, care, reciprocity, restraint of violence, and responsibility beyond the individual[6]. These similarities should be treated as resources for intercultural justification, not as evidence that the traditions are doctrinally equivalent or internally unified[7].

These traditions should be integrated critically rather than romanticized or homogenized. No religious, secular, Western, or non-Western tradition is beyond criticism. Their contributions remain acceptable only insofar as they support dignity, development, non-domination, ecological continuity, and correction. The aim is not a single universal morality, but an overlapping foundation that different traditions can justify in their own terms.

This convergence supports seven connected minimum principles: human dignity, developmental opportunity, limitation of harm, ecological restraint, social recognition, institutional correctability, and intergenerational responsibility. Together, these principles define a boundary below which social reproduction becomes destructive. They do not prescribe a complete theory of justice or a single institutional model but provide criteria for identifying arrangements that systematically undermine human and ecological development. The principles have a two-level structure. Dignity, protection against severe harm, and the preservation of basic developmental and ecological conditions function as minimum constraints. Above that threshold, recognition, correctability, and intergenerational responsibility guide the public balancing of competing claims. No formula resolves these conflicts automatically; institutions must disclose the reasons for prioritization and preserve opportunities for challenge.

Correctability is essential because knowledge is incomplete, institutions contain blind spots, and power tends to reproduce itself. It requires transparent decision-making, access to information, independent courts and oversight, opportunities for objection and appeal, public criticism, and the ability to revise policy. Yet correctability cannot serve as the only organizing principle. The mere possibility of change does not guarantee that change will be just. Correction must remain oriented towards dignity, justice, social cohesion, and ecological sustainability.

Justice consequently involves persistent tensions rather than perfect harmony[8]. Freedom must be balanced with equality, since unlimited freedom can concentrate power while excessive equalization can suppress autonomy and diversity. Economic development must remain within ecological limits. Plurality requires enough cohesion and shared knowledge to prevent fragmentation, while cohesion must not become enforced uniformity. Stability is necessary for trust, yet too much stability produces rigidity; change is necessary for learning, yet constant disruption can destroy institutional reliability. Legitimate decisions make these trade-offs transparent, include those affected, justify their priorities, and remain open to revision.

Conflict is therefore not eliminated but institutionally regulated. Independent courts limit arbitrary power, democratic and deliberative forums convert disagreement into public reasoning, social movements expose neglected injustice, and free media provide the knowledge needed for meaningful contestation. A just society is not conflict-free but capable of preventing conflict from becoming violent, exclusionary, or structurally oppressive.

Institutional design must make its values and distributive consequences explicit. It should incorporate plural perspectives, embed feedback and accountability, respect material and ecological limits, and acknowledge the boundaries of social engineering. Scientific expertise is indispensable for understanding consequences, but it cannot replace moral and democratic judgment. Conversely, ideological certainty cannot justify closing institutions to evidence or criticism.

Digital systems require the same scrutiny because algorithms, data infrastructures, and platforms increasingly distribute knowledge, attention, opportunities, and political influence. They must be transparent, independently auditable, non-discriminatory, contestable, and publicly accountable. Otherwise, digital infrastructures can concentrate economic and epistemic power while placing consequential decisions beyond effective correction.

Moral disagreement is compatible with constitutional cooperation when three conditions hold: the common minimum is sufficiently substantive to prevent domination, the reasons offered for collective decisions are publicly contestable, and institutional choices remain revisable without placing basic rights at permanent risk.

Where disagreement persists, public justification should separate three questions. Is a protected minimum—such as bodily integrity, equal status, subsistence, or access to remedy—at stake? Which empirical claims connect the proposed measure to that minimum, and how uncertain are they? Which choices remain open to people who reject the majority’s moral interpretation? A decision gains legitimacy when it answers these questions publicly, burdens dissenters no more than necessary, and remains open to legal and democratic correction.

A just order does not require complete moral agreement. It requires a sufficiently substantive and widely defensible minimum within which disagreement can remain peaceful, productive, and correctable. Justice is therefore not a final state but an ongoing practice of balancing values, addressing power, learning from failure, and renewing institutions without undermining the human and ecological foundations on which society depends.

Would you like to explore how a relational understanding of humanity can transform democracy, law, the economy, and public institutions? Click the link below to read the full book, Becoming Human Together, and discover a new framework for building a more humane, democratic, and correctable society within ecological limits.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/413458836_Becoming_Human_Together_Rethinking_Democracy_Power_and_Institutions_for_a_Complex_and_Changing_World

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[1] John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), especially the idea of overlapping consensus; Charles Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

[2] United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Christopher McCrudden, “Human Dignity and Judicial Interpretation of Human Rights,” European Journal of International Law 19, no. 4 (2008): 655–724, https://doi.org/10.1093/ejil/chn043.

[3] Forst, The Right to Justification; Iris Marion Young, Inclusion and Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), https://doi.org/10.1093/0198297556.001.0001.

[4] Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm; Edith Brown Weiss, In Fairness to Future Generations (Tokyo: United Nations University, 1989).

[5] Rawls, Political Liberalism; Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

[6] Kyle Powys Whyte, “Indigenous Climate Change Studies,” English Language Notes 55, nos. 1–2 (2017): 153–162, https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-55.1-2.153.

[7] Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006); Thaddeus Metz, A Relational Moral Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748960.001.0001; Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011).

[8] Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996); Joan C. Tronto, Caring Democracy (New York: New York University Press, 2013).