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John Rawls used the concept of "reflective equilibrium" to help support his theory of justice. In general, a reflective equilibrium is a state that one arrives at after considering one's basic moral judgments in the light of proposed principles of morals or justice. In this process, one may adjust either the principles or one's judgments until the two are consistent and mutually supportive. Rawls takes this approach in part because he does not believe that the principles of justice are "necessary truths" or "derivable from such truths." He writes as follows:

When a person is presented with an intuitively appealing account of his sense of justice (one, say, which embodies various reasonable and natural presumptions), he may well revise his judgments to conform to its principles even though the theory does not fit his existing judgments exactly. . . . From the standpoint of moral philosophy, the best account of a person's sense of justice is not the one which fits his judgments prior to his examining any conception of justice, but rather the one which matches his judgments in reflective equilibrium. As we have seen, this state is one reached after a person has weighed various proposed conceptions and he has either revised his judgments to accord with one of them or held fast to his initial convictions (and the corresponding conception). . . .

Moral philosophy is Socratic: we may want to change our present considered judgments once their regulative principles are brought to light. And we may want to do this even though these principles are a perfect fit. A knowledge of these principles may suggest further reflections that lead us to revise out judgments.

Reference: From A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, p. 21, 48.