Fraternal Learning and interdependency: Celebrating Differences within Reciprocal Commitments

The value of reciprocity is often promoted through contemporary policy-making. In contrast, political philosophers, through developing critiques of the Rawlsian conception of justice as reciprocity, have often argued against such a principle forming a basis for legitimating policies. This paper also offers a critique of contemporary policy-making but using a re-cast form of the Rawlsian justification of reciprocity. My main argument is that the Rawlsian premise of ‘sharing’ fates is too weak (by itself) to underpin reciprocity. However, reciprocity might be more securely based on the premise of learning from each other’s fates, given the diversity of individual experiences.