iples and institutions mustalso be conceived in a way that permits an overlapping consensus fora political society marked by a "reasonable pluralism" (p. 133). Reasonable pluralism is not a mere fact, but the achievement of a peoplewho have prospered and developed within the context of free institutions. Therefore, overlapping consensus also is not just a limitplaced upon the employment of "public reason" but an end of politicalinstitutions. Whatever the abstract scheme of justice, it must providefor the citizens' ability to connect the scheme to their own respectivecomprehensive doctrines

owhere is the new emphasis on political rather than moraltheory more apparent than in Rawls's treatment of the primary goods,namely, that minimal list of goods considered by the rational contractors in the original position. In Theory, the primary goods?rightsand liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth, and selfrespect?were those things needed by any agent, because they are theelements of any rational plan of

10 Rawls's understanding of the primary goods is now based on a political rather than a general moral oranthropological conception of human needs. They are the needs ofcitizens in a certain kind of regime, namely, the liberal regime. Therefore, Rawls asks not what anyone needs but what citizens of a liberalregime need

Perhaps the most striking and certainly one of the mostcontroversial features of Rawls's Theory was his argument that "theright" subordinates (for purposes of the political order) not only material interests in the economic sphere, but also individuals' fully considered conceptions of the moral good, human flourishing, and finalends.2 Hence, Rawls's theory of justice was meant to be a systematicalternative both to the economic pragmatism of other modern contracttheorists as well as to the classical tradition of perfectionism in political theory.