John Rawls' Theory of Justice

GROUP ACTIVITY (NEXT THURSDAY) GUIDE QUESTIONS JOHN Q (FILM)

  • What are the socio-political and economic issues in the film?

  • What are the struggles of John Archibald and his family prior to the conflict?

  • What types of moral dilemmas could you identify in the film?

  • How would (natural law, ethical relativism, virtue ethics, Rawl’s Theory of Justice) respond to the moral dilemma?

JOHN RAWLS' THEORY OF JUSTICE

  • John Rawls’ theory of justice attempts to explain why clear social inequalities are unjust and what a just society really is.

  • Rawls’ theory of justice as he developed in his seminal work A Theory of Justice is both a work of ethics and politics.

  • Hence, we can glean from Rawls’ theory of justice some kind of an ethical theory. For one, in his A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempted to address the problem of distributive justice.

  • Distributive Justice – “the perceived fairness of an allocation or, more broadly, to how people judge what they receive” (Science Direct)

SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES OF RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE

  • Rawls believes that a just society is one whose characteristics conform to normative rules that everyone would agree.

  • This explains why Rawls’ theory of justice begins by introducing the fundamental principle that every individual is inviolable.

  • Rawls writes: “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of the state cannot override.”

  • Therefore, the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interest.” From this fundamental principle, we can draw the following implications.

RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE

  • From this fundamental principle, we can draw the following implications.

    • First, for Rawls, life should not be sacrificed for the sake of the majority. For example, suppressing the people’s right to speech and expression for the sake of economic growth is morally wrong for Rawls. As we can see, Rawls’ theory of justice directly attacks consequentialist ethics, especially its most notable representative, that is, utilitarianism.

    • Second, it would appear that for Rawls, an erroneous theory is tolerable in the absence of a good one. Thus, as Rawls would have us believe, an unjust law is better than no law at all.

    • In other words, an act of injustice is tolerable if and only if it is necessary to avoid greater act of injustice.

    • For example, it might be morally right to incapacitate, if not kill, a notorious serial killer if it is the only way to stop him from killing more innocent people.

    • And third, individual liberties should be restricted in order to maintain equality of opportunity. For Rawls, restrictions through law preserves freedom in democracy.

    • For example, it is probably morally right to restrict people from owning more than 5 hectares of agricultural lot so that other people will have the chance to own a lot.

  • With this, we can now come up with two basic principles of justice that Rawls introduced in his seminal work A Theory of Justice.

  • These two principles of justice are expressions of what Rawls calls “justice as fairness”.

    • The first principle puts emphasis on equal access to the basic human needs, rights, and liberties. Rawls calls this the equal liberty principle.

    • This principle guarantees the right of each person to have the extensive basic liberty compatible with the liberty of others.

RIGHTS

  • Right to vote.

  • Right to speech.

  • Right to peaceable assembly.

  • “Human rights include the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work and education, and many more. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination.”

RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE

  • The second principle emphasizes the idea of fair equality of opportunity and the equal distribution of socio-economic inequalities. Rawls calls this the difference principle.

  • This principle implies that social and economic positions are to be to a) everyone’s advantage and b) open to all.

PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS

  • “First, they must guarantee fair equality of opportunities for competition to positions of public office and employment.

  • Second, social and economic inequalities must be arranged in a manner that they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.”

RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE

  • But how can such principles be universally adopted? Or how can we actualize Rawls’ theory of justice?

  • It is here where Rawls’ notions of the “Veil of Ignorance” and the “Original Position” come in.

VEIL OF IGNORANCE AND ORIGINAL POSITION

  • Rawls introduces the theoretical “veil of ignorance” in which all players in the social game would be placed in a hypothetical situation (thought experiment) called the “original position”.

  • Rawls suggests that in the original position, each individual does not know her sex, race, natural abilities, social status, economic conditions, and the like.

  • Consider, for example:

    • If one is to imagine that one has completely forgotten her identity, socio-economic status, political affiliation, sex, gender, age, and the like, how would you perceive justice? (But you know how socio-economic systems and governments work)

    • Won’t you choose to be just and fair? Note: for Rawls, this is where the social agents could come to a point of impartial judgment and the formulation of a social contract (one only makes use of reason - for the common good)

  • In other words, in the original position, individuals hide their identity behind the “veil of ignorance”.

  • Just like in Husserl’s epoche or phenomenological reduction, the individual in the original position sets aside her biases towards and preconceptions about anything.

  • According to Rawls, out of this veil of ignorance, each individual makes a rational prudential choice concerning the kind of social institution they would enter into contract with.

  • Rawls appears to be a moral contractarian and his theory of justice is in itself a kind of social contract.

  • Rawls recommends that individuals in the veil of ignorance ought to adopt a generalized point of view that bears strong resemblance to a moral point of view.

  • And according to Rawls, if everybody in the original position promotes equality then “justice as fairness” is attained. If inequality is upheld, then injustice prevails.

  • “Rawls argued that only under a "veil of ignorance" could human beings reach a fair and impartial agreement (contract) as true equals not biased by their place in society. They would have to rely only on the human powers of reason to choose principles of social justice for their society.” – Constitutional Rights Foundation

  • As we can see, justice as fairness is achieved through the notions of the original position and the veil of ignorance. In the original position, individuals agree on specific social rules and institutions and in the veil of ignorance, individuals choose the basic structure of society that they thought is just.

  • This is possible because Rawls argues that selfish but rational people who are detached from their concrete identity and context will freely choose to create a society that is truly just. In fact, Rawls believes that through the veil of ignorance, individuals can identify universal beliefs about how society should be organized.