Abstract

Examines the initial critique of justice‐based political theory. This critical movement was not so much a resistance to the idea of justice as to its Universalist pretensions. An attempt was thus made to root political theory in a form of conventionalism. This chapter examines the sophisticated origins of the conventionalist form of argument in the writings of Michael Oakeshott, the better‐known writings of communitarianism and the reaction of the later Rawls to communitarianism in terms of his ideas on political liberalism.