Principles of justice

Abstract

The original political contract has so far been defined only in procedural terms as a transcendental exchange; we must now explicate its content. To begin, one of the advantages of the original legal contract must be asserted: it is that from which people as such benefit and which only occurs reciprocally. If thereby the hypothesis of a normative modernisation is indeed confirmed, a two-stage response must then be examined: this basic benefit of the law is followed by the full development of a ‘modern’ form of the law in the normative sense.