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One more thing, while I'm on a roll here. Rawls proposes what some philosophers call an ideal theory. He assumes we are talking about the rules that are appropriate for a just society -- a society in which nearly eveyone acts justly nearly all the time. He also begins with an ideal situation -- the Original Position -- and tries to deduce principles of justice. He also urges us to go back and forth between the principles chosen in the Original Position and our considered judgments until we reach a reflective equilibrium. He seems to believe that it will not be hard to reach that equilibrium.

What I want to suggest is something different -- something suggested by Virginia Held. Held stresses that we do not live in a just society. There is an enormous amount of injustice, especially in the way that women and minorities are treated (and have been treated for centuries). It's not obvious how we are to get from the principles chosen in an ideal hypothetical situation like the Rawlsean Original Position to principles that we can apply in the society we live in. I'm not sure how to make the transition, and Rawls doesn't help much.

Held suggests a different sort of reflective equilibrium. She suggests that we think of any "existing or concretely proposed set of social, legal, political, economic, or personal arrangements, structures, institutions, or sets of actions, and to consider them as embodying a hypothesis about how society ought to be organized." We should try to formulate the principles behind these arrangements and compare their implications with our concrete judgments about moral issues. We should then work through the process of give and take that Rawls describes toward a reflective equilibrium. [Rights and Goods, p. 56-57.]

This sort of process never leaves the real situations in which we find ourselves. It does not include trying to place ourselves in an ideal hypothetical situation. It does not confine itself to developing principles for a just society when we know we do not live in such a society. Instead, it begins and ends with real moral experiences in real situations. There is still a search for reflective equilibrium, but all of the comparisons are between real experiences -- not between real experience and ideal theories.