Abstract

Up to the middle of the 20th Century, studies of metaethics were the main object of study of the analitical current which covered that area, leaving aside fundamental problems, considered meaningless at that time. Even though Rawls is heir of this philosophical current, he supports a new approach which goes back to the substancial nature of ethics, though set in a framework whose political basis supposedly is liberal democracy, his methodology of contractualism and content, and a constructivism lacking metaphysical presuppositions, strongly influenced by Kantian thought. Taking these elements, Rawls designs a theory of justice whose main aspiration is faimess, a theory by which he tries to disprove the two main ethical currents of his time: Utilitarism and Intuitionism. To all this he adds a clear intention of considering an ordered society the one where Right is above Good. According to him, only then a pluralist society will be possible, a society where the ends of liberal democracy can be accomplished.