

A strong response to this claim is Paul Ricoeur’s critique of Rawls on the question of the possibility of a pure procedure in the determination of the principles of justice that will govern the social institutions of a polity.

Specifically, Rawls claims that the principles “which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits” among persons engaged in social cooperation will be chosen following a pure procedure. Central to John Rawls’s theory of justice is the assertion that justice as fairness is a type of procedural justice.
