The opportunity of the common good on contemporary justice debates

John Rawls's work; A Theory of Justice, has led to the emergence of a wide literature on justice debates. This extensive literature, which emerged as a result of views that deal with justice from different perspectives, such as the foundations of justice, the redistribution of wealth, the relationship between freedom and justice as well as who deserves what, has flourished in three separate branches.The focus of this study is the justice debate on the priority of good and right, which developed with the criticisms of communitarian thinkers in the 1980s. The conflict about the priority of the good and the right will be examined on two different levels, ontological and sociological.In the ontological dimension, the concept of the deontological person will be discussed and the impossibility of the deontological person will be mentioned. The subject of impartiality of the state at the sociological level will be discussed and its limitations will be pointed out on how much it carries the necessary conditions in providing justice. In this context, this study problematizes the possibility of the existence of an ideal of the common good in contemporary justice debates. While taking into account the concern of paternalism in the political realm, it argues that our discussions about justice must include our moral motivations. It is argued that excluding the moral foundations of our disputes, by pointing out the limitations of the idea of public reason in the face of the incommensurabilitythat dominates our justice debates, will not provide sufficient conditions for establishing social justice. It is claimed that the common good can find wider opportunities in our justice discussions, which we will carry out in the form of negotiations that include our moral motivations, together with this study.