⒈ John Rawls: A Theory Of Justice
Social contract theory is undoubtedly with us for the foreseeable future. In other words, the contract, which claims to be in the interests of everyone equally, is really in the interests of the few who have become stronger and richer as a result of the developments of private property. Part a of Stanley Milgrams Experiments On Obedience second principle is referred John Rawls: A Theory Of Justice as the difference principle while part Airedale Incident Analysis is referred Essay On A Rich Man Is Rich as the equal opportunity principle. Collective Responsibility? Hobbes argues for this by John Rawls: A Theory Of Justice men in their natural state, or in other words, the State of Nature.
John Rawls: A Theory of Justice Visual Review in Two Minutes
In fact, no idea in Western civilization has been more consistently linked to ethics and morality than the idea of justice. From the Republic, written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, to A Theory of Justice, written by the late Harvard philosopher John Rawls, every major work on ethics has held that justice is part of the central core of morality. Justice means giving each person what he or she deserves or, in more traditional terms, giving each person his or her due.
Justice and fairness are closely related terms that are often today used interchangeably. There have, however, also been more distinct understandings of the two terms. While justice usually has been used with reference to a standard of rightness, fairness often has been used with regard to an ability to judge without reference to one's feelings or interests; fairness has also been used to refer to the ability to make judgments that are not overly general but that are concrete and specific to a particular case.
In any case, a notion of being treated as one deserves is crucial to both justice and fairness. When people differ over what they believe should be given, or when decisions have to be made about how benefits and burdens should be distributed among a group of people, questions of justice or fairness inevitably arise. In fact, most ethicists today hold the view that there would be no point of talking about justice or fairness if it were not for the conflicts of interest that are created when goods and services are scarce and people differ over who should get what. When such conflicts arise in our society, we need principles of justice that we can all accept as reasonable and fair standards for determining what people deserve.
But saying that justice is giving each person what he or she deserves does not take us very far. How do we determine what people deserve? What criteria and what principles should we use to determine what is due to this or that person? Principles of Justice The most fundamental principle of justice—one that has been widely accepted since it was first defined by Aristotle more than two thousand years ago—is the principle that "equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.
And if Jack is paid more than Jill simply because he is a man, or because he is white, then we have an injustice—a form of discrimination—because race and sex are not relevant to normal work situations. There are, however, many differences that we deem as justifiable criteria for treating people differently. For example, we think it is fair and just when a parent gives his own children more attention and care in his private affairs than he gives the children of others; we think it is fair when the person who is first in a line at a theater is given first choice of theater tickets; we think it is just when the government gives benefits to the needy that it does not provide to more affluent citizens; we think it is just when some who have done wrong are given punishments that are not meted out to others who have done nothing wrong; and we think it is fair when those who exert more efforts or who make a greater contribution to a project receive more benefits from the project than others.
These criteria—need, desert, contribution, and effort—we acknowledge as justifying differential treatment, then, are numerous. On the other hand, there are also criteria that we believe are not justifiable grounds for giving people different treatment. In the world of work, for example, we generally hold that it is unjust to give individuals special treatment on the basis of age, sex, race, or their religious preferences. If the judge's nephew receives a suspended sentence for armed robbery when another offender unrelated to the judge goes to jail for the same crime, or the brother of the Director of Public Works gets the million dollar contract to install sprinklers on the municipal golf course despite lower bids from other contractors, we say that it's unfair.
We also believe it isn't fair when a person is punished for something over which he or she had no control, or isn't compensated for a harm he or she suffered. Different Kinds of Justice There are different kinds of justice. Distributive justice refers to the extent to which society's institutions ensure that benefits and burdens are distributed among society's members in ways that are fair and just. When the institutions of a society distribute benefits or burdens in unjust ways, there is a strong presumption that those institutions should be changed. For example, the American institution of slavery in the pre-civil war South was condemned as unjust because it was a glaring case of treating people differently on the basis of race.
A second important kind of justice is retributive or corrective justice. Retributive justice refers to the extent to which punishments are fair and just. But what about the justification of these values? Since any such justification would necessarily draw upon deep religious or moral metaphysical commitments which would be reasonably rejectable, Rawls held that the public political values may only be justified privately by individual citizens. The public liberal political conception and its attendant values may and will be affirmed publicly in judicial opinions and presidential addresses, for example but its deep justifications will not.
The task of justification falls to what Rawls called the "reasonable comprehensive doctrines" and the citizens who subscribe to them. A reasonable Catholic will justify the liberal values one way, a reasonable Muslim another, and a reasonable secular citizen yet another way. One may illustrate Rawls's idea using a Venn diagram: the public political values will be the shared space upon which overlap numerous reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Rawls's account of stability presented in A Theory of Justice is a detailed portrait of the compatibility of one — Kantian — comprehensive doctrine with justice as fairness.
His hope is that similar accounts may be presented for many other comprehensive doctrines. This is Rawls's famous notion of an " overlapping consensus. Such a consensus would necessarily exclude some doctrines, namely, those that are "unreasonable," and so one may wonder what Rawls has to say about such doctrines. An unreasonable comprehensive doctrine is unreasonable in the sense that it is incompatible with the duty of civility. This is simply another way of saying that an unreasonable doctrine is incompatible with the fundamental political values a liberal theory of justice is designed to safeguard — freedom, equality and fairness. So one answer to the question of what Rawls has to say about such doctrines is — nothing. For one thing, the liberal state cannot justify itself to individuals such as religious fundamentalists who hold to such doctrines, because any such justification would — as has been noted — proceed in terms of controversial moral or religious commitments that are excluded from the public political forum.
But, more importantly, the goal of the Rawlsian project is primarily to determine whether or not the liberal conception of political legitimacy is internally coherent, and this project is carried out by the specification of what sorts of reasons persons committed to liberal values are permitted to use in their dialogue, deliberations and arguments with one another about political matters. The Rawlsian project has this goal to the exclusion of concern with justifying liberal values to those not already committed — or at least open — to them.
Rawls's concern is with whether or not the idea of political legitimacy fleshed out in terms of the duty of civility and mutual justification can serve as a viable form of public discourse in the face of the religious and moral pluralism of modern democratic society, not with justifying this conception of political legitimacy in the first place. Rawls also modified the principles of justice as follows with the first principle having priority over the second, and the first half of the second having priority over the latter half :.
These principles are subtly modified from the principles in Theory. The first principle now reads "equal claim" instead of "equal right," and he also replaces the phrase "system of basic liberties" with "a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties. Although there were passing comments on international affairs in A Theory of Justice , it was not until late in his career that Rawls formulated a comprehensive theory of international politics with the publication of The Law of Peoples. He claimed there that "well-ordered" peoples could be either "liberal" or "decent.
Rawls argued that the legitimacy of a liberal international order is contingent on tolerating decent peoples , which differ from liberal peoples , among other ways, in that they might have state religions and deny adherents of minority faiths the right to hold positions of power within the state, and might organize political participation via consultation hierarchies rather than elections. However, no well-ordered peoples may violate human rights or behave in an externally aggressive manner.
Peoples that fail to meet the criteria of "liberal" or "decent" peoples are referred to as 'outlaw states,' 'societies burdened by unfavourable conditions' or "benevolent absolutisms' depending on their particular failings. Such peoples do not have the right to mutual respect and toleration possessed by liberal and decent peoples. Rawls's views on global distributive justice as they were expressed in this work surprised many of his fellow egalitarian liberals. For example, Charles Beitz had previously written a study that argued for the application of Rawls's Difference Principles globally.
Rawls denied that his principles should be so applied, partly on the grounds that a world state does not exist and would not be stable. This notion has been challenged, as a comprehensive system of global governance has arisen, amongst others in the form of the Bretton Woods system , that serves to distribute primary social goods between human beings. It has thus been argued that a cosmopolitan application of the theory of justice as fairness is the more reasonable alternative to the application of The Law of Peoples, as it would be more legitimate towards all persons over whom political coercive power is exercised. According to Rawls however, nation states, unlike citizens, were self-sufficient in the cooperative enterprises that constitute domestic societies.
Although Rawls recognized that aid should be given to governments which are unable to protect human rights for economic reasons, he claimed that the purpose for this aid is not to achieve an eventual state of global equality, but rather only to ensure that these societies could maintain liberal or decent political institutions. He argued, among other things, that continuing to give aid indefinitely would see nations with industrious populations subsidize those with idle populations and would create a moral hazard problem where governments could spend irresponsibly in the knowledge that they will be bailed out by those nations who had spent responsibly.
Rawls's discussion of "non-ideal" theory, on the other hand, included a condemnation of bombing civilians and of the American bombing of German and Japanese cities in World War II , as well as discussions of immigration and nuclear proliferation. He also detailed here the ideal of the statesman, a political leader who looks to the next generation and promotes international harmony, even in the face of significant domestic pressure to act otherwise. Rawls also controversially claimed that violations of human rights can legitimize military intervention in the violating states, though he also expressed the hope that such societies could be induced to reform peacefully by the good example of liberal and decent peoples.
Despite the exacting, academic tone of Rawls' writing and his reclusive personality, his philosophical work has exerted an enormous impact on not only contemporary moral and political philosophy but also public political discourse. During the student protests at Tiananmen Square in , copies of "A Theory of Justice" were brandished by protesters in the face of government officials. Although having a profound influence on theories of distributive justice both in theory and in practice, the generally anti- meritocratic sentiment of Rawls' thinking has not been widely accepted by the political left.
He consistently held the view that naturally developed skills and endowments could not be neatly distinguished from inherited ones, and that neither could be used to justify moral desert. This aspect of Rawls' work has been instrumental in the development of such ideas as luck egalitarianism and unconditional basic income , which have themselves been criticized. Charles Taylor , Alasdair Macintyre , Michael Sandel , and Michael Walzer all have posed formidable oppositions to Rawls' theory of justice throughout their careers, stimulating a large reactionary body of normative and critical scholarship.
The late philosopher G. Cohen , along with political scientist Jon Elster , and John Roemer used Rawls' writings extensively to inaugurate the Analytical Marxism movement in the s. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. American political philosopher. This article is about the American philosopher. For other people, see John Rawls disambiguation. Baltimore, Maryland , U. Lexington, Massachusetts , U. Analytic Social liberalism. Political philosophy Politics Social contract theory Democracy Political Legitimacy Instrumental and value rationality. Justice as fairness Original position Reflective equilibrium Overlapping consensus Property-owning democracy Public reason Liberal neutrality [1] Veil of ignorance Deliberative democracy Liberal socialism Primary goods Telishment Dismissal of the Concept of Desert [2].
Age of Enlightenment List of liberal theorists contributions to liberal theory. Schools of thought. Regional variants. Related topics. Main article: A Theory of Justice. A Theory of Justice , 1st ed. Visual illustration of the " original position " and " veil of ignorance ". Citizens making choices about their society are asked to make them from an "original position" of equality at left behind a "veil of ignorance" wall, center , without knowing what gender, race, abilities, tastes, wealth, or position in society they will have at right. Rawls claims this will cause them to choose "fair" policies. Main article: The Law of Peoples. ISBN NY Times. Zalta, Edward N. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Spring ed. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
December 1, The New York Times. ISSN Retrieved September 7, Contemporary political philosophy : an introduction. Oxford [England]: Clarendon Press. OCLC Political philosophy : a beginners' guide for students and politicians Second edition, revised and expanded ed. Cambridge: Polity. Zuckert Ed. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved January 21, The Canadian Political Science Review. June Retrieved February 26, Rochester, NY. SSRN The Guardian. April 12, Retrieved January 31, John Rawls Winter ed. Tablet Magazine. Retrieved April 19, Military History Monthly. June 13, Retrieved December 6, Later Rawls confided the whole experience was 'particularly terrible' The Heritage Foundation. August 13, Davis; Clarke E.
Cochran; Corwin Smidt InterVarsity Press. Religious beliefs, argues John Rawls—a Harvard philosopher and self- identifying atheist—can be so divisive in a pluralistic culture that they subvert the stability of a society. He wrote that the scenes still haunted him 50 years later. Retrieved August 26, Retrieved October 18, December 5, But only in did he come up with a comprehensive answer. His theory starts by imagining away all that had gone before, just as the past had been erased in Hiroshima. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Chapter 7. Applying Rawls in a Globalizing World Thesis. University of Utrecht. April 2, JSTOR On Welfare, Goods and Capabilities". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Rawls claims this will cause them to choose "fair" policies. And if Jack is paid more than John Rawls: A Theory Of Justice simply because he is a man, or because he is white, then we have an injustice—a form of discrimination—because Character Analysis: Hayao Miyazaki and sex are not relevant to normal work situations. Arguments about justice or fairness have a long tradition in Western civilization. XV, No. Einer der ersten Kritiker aus dieser Sicht war Michael Sandel. Nonetheless, we would want to ensure at least the "fair worth" of our liberties: wherever one ends Shiver Character Analysis in society, one wants life to be worth living, with enough effective freedom to pursue personal goals. The police have solid evidence of a lesser John Rawls: A Theory Of Justice that John Rawls: A Theory Of Justice committed, but need confessions in order to convict them on more serious charges.