On the centrality of reciprocity in Rawls: a reassessment
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2026.e111465Keywords:
fair reciprocity, justice as reciprocity, relational justiceAbstract
This article examines the role of reciprocity in John Rawls’s theory of justice and argues that it should be understood not merely as a value associated with justice as fairness, but as a constitutive element of the concept of justice itself. Through a reconstruction of Justice as Reciprocity, the paper argues that reciprocity provides the normative basis connecting the rejection of arbitrary distinctions to the demand for an adequate distribution of benefits and burdens within shared social practices. In this sense, reciprocity is not reduced to an exchange of advantages, but expresses a relational structure grounded in mutual justification among free and equal people. The article also considers Andrew Lister’s interpretation, according to which certain duties of justice aim at establishing a relation of mutual recognition among equals, thereby clarifying the relational character of Rawlsian justice and its implications for contemporary debates.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Julia Sichieri Moura, Raquel Cipriani
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