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A Theory of Justice
Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book.
Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition - justice as fairness - and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.
Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition - justice as fairness - and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.
824 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
About the author
John Rawls
54 books567 followersJohn Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard. His magnum opus A Theory of Justice (1971) is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy." His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism, takes as its starting point the argument that "most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position." Rawls employs a number of thought experiments—including the famous veil of ignorance—to determine what constitutes a fair agreement in which "everyone is impartially situated as equals," in order to determine principles of social justice.
Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls's thought "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself."
Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999, the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls's thought "helped a whole generation of learned Americans revive their faith in democracy itself."
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November 21, 2020
It took me a while to understand what this famous book was about - I am still far from up to speed with moral philosophy - but once I'd figured out where Rawls was heading it made good sense and was very illuminating. The central question, if I may practice my still unfluent moral philosophyspeak for a moment, concerns the relationship between the Right and the Good, and how they should inform our choice of social structures: in particular, which of the two should take precedence.
This may sound like medieval angels-on-the-point-of-a-pin hairsplitting, and I am sure I would once have dismissed it in those terms, but to my surprise I found it has a precise meaning. The Good, roughly, is what we want to do, or what will benefit us; the Right is what we are allowed to do, when our desires come into conflict with other people's. The Good will in general be a private notion: what makes me happy need not concern anyone but me. But the Right has to be a public notion. If it's going to determine who gets their way when my pursuit of my Good conflicts with your pursuit of yours, then there has to be a set of agreements we have both agreed to honour, otherwise there's no point in having a notion of Right in the first place.
Now if we're thinking about how to organise a society, which is what this book is about, should we start with the Right or the Good? Rawls says the standard answer is the one provided by utilitarianism. We start with the Good, we add up or average the amount of Good that everyone manages to accumulate, and we organise society so as to maximize that. ("The greatest good of the greatest number"). The upside is that, on average, people will by definition come out ahead. The downside is that some people will end up gaining at other people's expense. Unless they're very selfless, the people who came out behind may not be prepared to support the scheme.
But suppose instead, says Rawls, that we start with the Right instead of the Good, and make our starting point the question of how we would need to set up the rules so that everyone did feel they would want to support the resulting society? He does this using a hypothetical scenario called the Original Position. Imagine that everyone had to agree on rules for how society would be run without knowing in advance which role they would end up getting; you wouldn't know if you were going to end up rich or poor, male or female, straight or gay, smart or dumb, whatever. (A friend who's read the book points out that Buddhists will find it particularly easy to accept this hypothesis). What rules would you advocate? Rawls's basic argument is that if we did things this way we'd end up with an egalitarian society that was both fairer and more stable. Since we wouldn't know who we'd end up being, we'd want to make sure that everything we did benefited the least well-off people as well as the average and above-average people; we might end up being one of those least well-off people, so we'd want to cover that eventuality.
The book is written in an abstract, impersonal way, but it's not hard to think of concrete examples to test the ideas. I wonder if Ursula Le Guin was a fan. Her short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", which came out two years after Rawls's book, is pretty much a thought experiment designed to explore the core hypothesis. (Would you want to live in a society which was a paradise in every respect except that it involved slowly torturing a child to death?) And her masterpiece The Dispossessed, published the year after that, is a novel-length treatment of a planet organised along Rawlsian principles. Everyone on Anarres is equal, everyone is equally valued. As we see in the book, this doesn't make life perfect; people aren't perfect, so how could it? But Le Guin convincingly shows how this kind of society furthers what what Rawls considers the most important good, people's self-respect. It's hard not to love the Anarresti.
Moving from literature to the real world, covid has given us a distressingly graphic taste of the difference between utilitarianism and egalitarianism. Some countries, like New Zealand under Ardern, have adopted an egalitarian approach: it is unacceptable to adopt policies which we know will allow vulnerable people to die, we have to think first about keeping everyone as safe as possible even if there's a cost. The US, under Trump, has taken the converse approach: it is better to allow hundreds of thousands of people to die than weaken the economy and reduce the average level of well-being. In this context, it's interesting to see that Ardern was reelected with a substantial majority, while Trump lost his reelection bid despite frantic efforts to game the system. These examples arguably support the claim that a democratic society will tend to favour egalitarian ideas ahead of utilitarian ones.
The book is a strange mixture of academic distance and real passion, and you never know what you'll find when you start a section. Rawls's usual style is, alas, extraordinarily soporific, and I'm not sure I've ever fallen asleep so many times in the middle of a paragraph; I think his editor was too lenient, and when I posted quotes as reading updates I almost always found myself shortening them by a good 50%. But mixed in with the dry, overqualified philosophical language there are some extraordinary lyrical passages, and the ending is inspiring and uplifting. He believes in what he's saying, and he's effective at making you think you need to consider his ideas and revise your own. If you haven't read The Dispossessed, I'd recommend that instead. But if you've already read The Dispossessed twice and you keep wondering what Odo's books were like, check out Rawls. It's probably as close as you're going to get.
This may sound like medieval angels-on-the-point-of-a-pin hairsplitting, and I am sure I would once have dismissed it in those terms, but to my surprise I found it has a precise meaning. The Good, roughly, is what we want to do, or what will benefit us; the Right is what we are allowed to do, when our desires come into conflict with other people's. The Good will in general be a private notion: what makes me happy need not concern anyone but me. But the Right has to be a public notion. If it's going to determine who gets their way when my pursuit of my Good conflicts with your pursuit of yours, then there has to be a set of agreements we have both agreed to honour, otherwise there's no point in having a notion of Right in the first place.
Now if we're thinking about how to organise a society, which is what this book is about, should we start with the Right or the Good? Rawls says the standard answer is the one provided by utilitarianism. We start with the Good, we add up or average the amount of Good that everyone manages to accumulate, and we organise society so as to maximize that. ("The greatest good of the greatest number"). The upside is that, on average, people will by definition come out ahead. The downside is that some people will end up gaining at other people's expense. Unless they're very selfless, the people who came out behind may not be prepared to support the scheme.
But suppose instead, says Rawls, that we start with the Right instead of the Good, and make our starting point the question of how we would need to set up the rules so that everyone did feel they would want to support the resulting society? He does this using a hypothetical scenario called the Original Position. Imagine that everyone had to agree on rules for how society would be run without knowing in advance which role they would end up getting; you wouldn't know if you were going to end up rich or poor, male or female, straight or gay, smart or dumb, whatever. (A friend who's read the book points out that Buddhists will find it particularly easy to accept this hypothesis). What rules would you advocate? Rawls's basic argument is that if we did things this way we'd end up with an egalitarian society that was both fairer and more stable. Since we wouldn't know who we'd end up being, we'd want to make sure that everything we did benefited the least well-off people as well as the average and above-average people; we might end up being one of those least well-off people, so we'd want to cover that eventuality.
The book is written in an abstract, impersonal way, but it's not hard to think of concrete examples to test the ideas. I wonder if Ursula Le Guin was a fan. Her short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", which came out two years after Rawls's book, is pretty much a thought experiment designed to explore the core hypothesis. (Would you want to live in a society which was a paradise in every respect except that it involved slowly torturing a child to death?) And her masterpiece The Dispossessed, published the year after that, is a novel-length treatment of a planet organised along Rawlsian principles. Everyone on Anarres is equal, everyone is equally valued. As we see in the book, this doesn't make life perfect; people aren't perfect, so how could it? But Le Guin convincingly shows how this kind of society furthers what what Rawls considers the most important good, people's self-respect. It's hard not to love the Anarresti.
Moving from literature to the real world, covid has given us a distressingly graphic taste of the difference between utilitarianism and egalitarianism. Some countries, like New Zealand under Ardern, have adopted an egalitarian approach: it is unacceptable to adopt policies which we know will allow vulnerable people to die, we have to think first about keeping everyone as safe as possible even if there's a cost. The US, under Trump, has taken the converse approach: it is better to allow hundreds of thousands of people to die than weaken the economy and reduce the average level of well-being. In this context, it's interesting to see that Ardern was reelected with a substantial majority, while Trump lost his reelection bid despite frantic efforts to game the system. These examples arguably support the claim that a democratic society will tend to favour egalitarian ideas ahead of utilitarian ones.
The book is a strange mixture of academic distance and real passion, and you never know what you'll find when you start a section. Rawls's usual style is, alas, extraordinarily soporific, and I'm not sure I've ever fallen asleep so many times in the middle of a paragraph; I think his editor was too lenient, and when I posted quotes as reading updates I almost always found myself shortening them by a good 50%. But mixed in with the dry, overqualified philosophical language there are some extraordinary lyrical passages, and the ending is inspiring and uplifting. He believes in what he's saying, and he's effective at making you think you need to consider his ideas and revise your own. If you haven't read The Dispossessed, I'd recommend that instead. But if you've already read The Dispossessed twice and you keep wondering what Odo's books were like, check out Rawls. It's probably as close as you're going to get.
January 27, 2011
What strikes me most as a non-philosopher reading this book is what Rawls doesn’t talk about. Libertarian ideas, the staple of American political and social discourse, receive no attention as such in this book. To the extent that libertarianism factors in at all, Rawls dismisses it so peremptorily he practically laughs at it. Yet his oblique approach does take on its precepts, as I‘ll mention later.
A Theory of Justice takes up a problem that goes back to the Enlightenment: If rights inure to individual persons, what role can society really play in our lives? Key to this paradox, it is argued, are the concepts of the good and of the right. There can be no meaningful notion of the good independent of a concept of what’s right, or just. A good society, then, cannot let its moral structure be dictated by its economic practices. The author construes justice from a Kantian standpoint and employs principles such as universalizability to make Rawls’s theory one that guarantees justice at the start, as opposed to one in which justice arises contingently from later developments.
The author dials us back to the state of nature, the famous theoretical starting point of Locke and Rousseau from which a society somehow must emerge. His unique angle is that he finds the state of nature inadequate as a starting point, so he modifies it into an “original position,” a point from which individuals can reason more effectively about the kind of social contract they ought to agree to. Here Rawls’s distinctive concept of the veil of ignorance comes into play.
Rawls advocates an objective and rational social contract theory. His book takes aim at two alternatives, utilitarianism and perfectionism. Outside dictatorships, he says, these are the two principles that actually do drive social and government policies in the rest of the world -- hence an example of the oblique swatdown of libertarian ideas. He takes apart both theories and proposes his own, based on a notion of equal liberties. Justice entails equal liberty for each person, and this principle has priority over other concepts.
Of special note, too, is Rawls’s discussion of justification. It is misguided, he argues, to justify any system on the basis of deduction or induction from starting principles. Starting principles alone will prove unable to account for a social system in its entirety. Justification for a system of social organization must come from a judgment of the system as a totality. That is, justification comes from within that system, taken as a whole. Here the critique of other ideals is less oblique, and the disagreement more contentious.
Libertarianism, this text implies, relies on principles common to many viewpoints. It’s these grounding principles that come under scrutiny throughout the book. He attacks the conflation of a self with one’s own self, dismissing theories that fail to reason objectively. Late in the book (by which I mean to say: You cannot get by reading just part of it) he critiques the idea of private society. He uses Kant to contrast people treated as ends with people treated as means, repudiating notions that derive the value of a human life from an individual’s social function. He asks what‘s really meant by “deserving“ something. Through Kant, too, he links natural rights with natural duties. Altruism he denies as a duty of justice: His original position is one of rational self-interest.
Rawls stresses the ideal nature of his theory, not its practical applications. The implication of his reasoning is that, rather than using ideals as the basis of some sort of revolution, whoever understands this theory will be able to apply it in small ways throughout society. It can also be applied piecemeal by people in authority within a society or government without having suddenly to rewrite the entire existing social arragement. The ideal theory empowers people to act on practical problems rather than dream of a perfect but unattainable future utopia.
I rate this book highly and recommend it to everyone. It is a work of philosophy that is accessible to non-philosophers, giving it a great advantage over philosophical works destined to remain within the confines of academia. It is a complete work, covering every aspect of society. It is highly innovative in its conception, a thought experiment laid out by a compelling and provocative line of reasoning. It carves out a specific niche in political thought. The proposal Rawls lays out has explanatory and predictive power. The book is perfect for people who love to read about ideas; but best of all, it satisfies the need of individuals to find some way to insert themselves into today's dramatically depersonalized social structure, a system that has arisen in our world through a mixture of complex technology and simple cruelty.
A Theory of Justice takes up a problem that goes back to the Enlightenment: If rights inure to individual persons, what role can society really play in our lives? Key to this paradox, it is argued, are the concepts of the good and of the right. There can be no meaningful notion of the good independent of a concept of what’s right, or just. A good society, then, cannot let its moral structure be dictated by its economic practices. The author construes justice from a Kantian standpoint and employs principles such as universalizability to make Rawls’s theory one that guarantees justice at the start, as opposed to one in which justice arises contingently from later developments.
The author dials us back to the state of nature, the famous theoretical starting point of Locke and Rousseau from which a society somehow must emerge. His unique angle is that he finds the state of nature inadequate as a starting point, so he modifies it into an “original position,” a point from which individuals can reason more effectively about the kind of social contract they ought to agree to. Here Rawls’s distinctive concept of the veil of ignorance comes into play.
Rawls advocates an objective and rational social contract theory. His book takes aim at two alternatives, utilitarianism and perfectionism. Outside dictatorships, he says, these are the two principles that actually do drive social and government policies in the rest of the world -- hence an example of the oblique swatdown of libertarian ideas. He takes apart both theories and proposes his own, based on a notion of equal liberties. Justice entails equal liberty for each person, and this principle has priority over other concepts.
Of special note, too, is Rawls’s discussion of justification. It is misguided, he argues, to justify any system on the basis of deduction or induction from starting principles. Starting principles alone will prove unable to account for a social system in its entirety. Justification for a system of social organization must come from a judgment of the system as a totality. That is, justification comes from within that system, taken as a whole. Here the critique of other ideals is less oblique, and the disagreement more contentious.
Libertarianism, this text implies, relies on principles common to many viewpoints. It’s these grounding principles that come under scrutiny throughout the book. He attacks the conflation of a self with one’s own self, dismissing theories that fail to reason objectively. Late in the book (by which I mean to say: You cannot get by reading just part of it) he critiques the idea of private society. He uses Kant to contrast people treated as ends with people treated as means, repudiating notions that derive the value of a human life from an individual’s social function. He asks what‘s really meant by “deserving“ something. Through Kant, too, he links natural rights with natural duties. Altruism he denies as a duty of justice: His original position is one of rational self-interest.
Rawls stresses the ideal nature of his theory, not its practical applications. The implication of his reasoning is that, rather than using ideals as the basis of some sort of revolution, whoever understands this theory will be able to apply it in small ways throughout society. It can also be applied piecemeal by people in authority within a society or government without having suddenly to rewrite the entire existing social arragement. The ideal theory empowers people to act on practical problems rather than dream of a perfect but unattainable future utopia.
I rate this book highly and recommend it to everyone. It is a work of philosophy that is accessible to non-philosophers, giving it a great advantage over philosophical works destined to remain within the confines of academia. It is a complete work, covering every aspect of society. It is highly innovative in its conception, a thought experiment laid out by a compelling and provocative line of reasoning. It carves out a specific niche in political thought. The proposal Rawls lays out has explanatory and predictive power. The book is perfect for people who love to read about ideas; but best of all, it satisfies the need of individuals to find some way to insert themselves into today's dramatically depersonalized social structure, a system that has arisen in our world through a mixture of complex technology and simple cruelty.
July 25, 2015
I read this ... gosh, about fifteen years ago now. Something about it always bugged me.
Rawls is trying to build on Kant's theory of ethics. Kant's thing was classic Enlightenment: trying to divorce morality from Christianity. Rawls' development is the veil of ignorance - essentially a social contract based on the Golden Rule.
The question is, what's your foundation for doing unto others as you would have them do unto you? Rawls doesn't argue from Christianity, of course, nor natural law, but self-interest. Put on the veil of ignorance such that you aren't sure of your social standing. Now set up a system of justice that you'd be okay with whether you're a Yale-educated white male earning $200k a year or somebody from Nickel and Dimed, or (in a grimmer example from the 1940s) a blond-haired, blue-eyed member of the Master Race or a Jew. You don't set minimum wage at $1/hour and you don't make it legal to gas minorities because you might turn out to be on the receiving end when the veil is lifted. Self-interest. Simple, yes?
The problem with the veil of ignorance is that it gets lifted - and when self-interest is your philosophical foundation, it doesn't just magically disappear on the back end. It reverts to might makes right. Maybe not at first, particularly if there's a balance of power. The Cold War is the classic example: with thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, the Soviets and Americans could grudgingly say, "I won't nuke you if you won't nuke me" ... mutually assured destruction, all that. But countries like, say, Grenada, found out pretty quickly there was another set of rules, and that's how you wind up on the receiving end of Operation Urgent Fury. "What happened to the Golden Rule?" the weak have asked throughout history. "What can you possibly do unto us?" is the reply of the strong.
Rawls is trying to build on Kant's theory of ethics. Kant's thing was classic Enlightenment: trying to divorce morality from Christianity. Rawls' development is the veil of ignorance - essentially a social contract based on the Golden Rule.
The question is, what's your foundation for doing unto others as you would have them do unto you? Rawls doesn't argue from Christianity, of course, nor natural law, but self-interest. Put on the veil of ignorance such that you aren't sure of your social standing. Now set up a system of justice that you'd be okay with whether you're a Yale-educated white male earning $200k a year or somebody from Nickel and Dimed, or (in a grimmer example from the 1940s) a blond-haired, blue-eyed member of the Master Race or a Jew. You don't set minimum wage at $1/hour and you don't make it legal to gas minorities because you might turn out to be on the receiving end when the veil is lifted. Self-interest. Simple, yes?
The problem with the veil of ignorance is that it gets lifted - and when self-interest is your philosophical foundation, it doesn't just magically disappear on the back end. It reverts to might makes right. Maybe not at first, particularly if there's a balance of power. The Cold War is the classic example: with thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at each other, the Soviets and Americans could grudgingly say, "I won't nuke you if you won't nuke me" ... mutually assured destruction, all that. But countries like, say, Grenada, found out pretty quickly there was another set of rules, and that's how you wind up on the receiving end of Operation Urgent Fury. "What happened to the Golden Rule?" the weak have asked throughout history. "What can you possibly do unto us?" is the reply of the strong.
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February 8, 2011My beef with John Rawls is twofold. First, there's his seriously questionable method invoking the "veil of ignorance," which is just a spiffier version of the easy-to-discredit social contract theory. Second, he seems to arrive at remarkably dull conclusions, that liberal democracy is the best possible way of dealing with human relations. OK, so first you're assuming all the assumptions that Western post-Enlightenment classical-liberals have, and then using those assumptions to inform a spurious thought experiment. So why am I unsurprised that you're assuming further that the subjects of that thought experiment "naturally" have a Western post-enlightenment classical-liberal concept of justice and morality? Jesus, this is such bad philosophy, attempting to remain in this Kantian space aloft from the messy contradictions of human behavior. Sorry Johnny, that ain't how the world works. Although I have to say, I'm pissed at the majority of GoodReads readers who reviewed this because it offends their even more ignorant libertarian/American individualist perspectives.
November 25, 2010
I’ll start with just a word of complaint. There is no reason at all why an intelligent person like John Rawls should write so badly. One does not expect Mark Twain, George Orwell or even J K Galbraith. However, Rawls could have put in some examples, so that the reader did not sink into a bog of abstract nouns, and it would have been good if he had injected an occasional flash of wit to dissuade the reader from falling off his chair.
This having been said, the book is useful and interesting. It propounds the ethnical theory that “justice” is the prime virtue, and that justice is identical with “fairness”. He calls his theory the “justice as fairness” theory.
His is a version of contract theory, that is he takes the view that morality (justice) arises out of a social contract (real or imaginary) which is supposed to have founded a social order. He reduces the idea of justice to two principles, provisionally stated (but later elaborated) as:.
“First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
Second: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all” p60
More generally, he states, “All social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the basis of self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage. Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all” p62. This is elaborated into two principles, the “efficiency” and the “difference” principles.
According to the efficiency principle, “a distribution of goods or a scheme of production is inefficient when there are ways of doing still better for some individuals without doing any worse for others.” What emerges from his discussion here is that there are many possible distributions of goods which coincide with this definition of efficiency.
The difference principle removes the indeterminateness of the principle of efficiency by singling out a particular position from which the social and economic inequalities of the basic structure are to be judged. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society p75.
True to the origins of these ideas in Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the principles of social justice and therefore the social contract itself is understood as having created “the basic structure of society”, “They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages” p61 So he does not concern himself with small scale social institutions such as families, firms, villages, cities and the like. It is plain too that he regards the nation state as the unit of society with which he is concerned, and I fear that this society is identical with the United States of America. It is as though there is no other.
I do have a difficulty with this last approach. The problem is that, when one gets down to sociological brass tacks, there is (as Margaret Thatcher said, but did not understand) there is indeed “no such thing as society”, but rather an indefinite number of circumstances, social relationships and social institutions, all of which are different from each other and all of which emerge out of the action and social interactions of individuals.
It follows first of all that social contracts are to be discovered not merely in the ones considered to be part of “the basic structure of society” (whichever these may be thought to be), but rather as the basis for each and every small-scale social relationship and institution. It also follows that, whether a particular structure discoverable in human relationships has widespread or merely local significance, such a structure is likely to be subject to change and revision. Far from having to imagine an “original” position, a possibly fictitious moment when social structure came into existence, one can actually witness, in the unfolding of social interaction, the social contracts that arise in the day-by-day evolution of social institutions and relationships. From time to time, we make new contacts and form new relationships; and conversely relationships sometimes end or fall into disuse. But the social contracts which are formed in the course of such relationships do change over time. Of course, in society as in nature, some structures persist for years, decades, even centuries, while others are more fleeting. Nevertheless, to speak of “an original position” - as though the structure of social relations had been set up once for all – could often be misleading.
One feature of Rawls’s theory is the notion that, in the original position, the just deal can be made under a “veil of secrecy” (136-142). Those involved “do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case p136 and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations.
This idea evoked for me the traditional figure of Justice, which appears over countless law courts as a blindfolded woman. This image is typically taken to refer to the necessity of impartiality in the administration of justice. Rawls, however, appears to use this image as the basis for the formulation of the laws before they are administered.
According to him, to be just, laws must be made beneath such a veil of ignorance. “It is assumed, then, that the parties to the original social contract do not know certain kinds of particular facts. First of all, no one knows his place in society, his own position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psychology such as his aversion to risk or liablilty to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know it economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong. These broader restrictions on knowledge are appropriate in part because questions of social justice arise between generations as well as within them - - - -. As far as possible, then, the only particular facts which the parties know is that their society is subject to the circumstances of justice and whatever this implies“. p137
I fear that I find these ideas of Rawls difficult to cope with. For me, social contracts are made by flesh and blood individuals in the course of their social interaction. The notion of a contract taking place in such abstract circumstances seems to me decidedly odd.
Although I am suspicious of Rawls, I found this book interesting and important. Indeed, and again despite my reservations, I shall undoubtedly revisit it and maybe even change my opinions.
This having been said, the book is useful and interesting. It propounds the ethnical theory that “justice” is the prime virtue, and that justice is identical with “fairness”. He calls his theory the “justice as fairness” theory.
His is a version of contract theory, that is he takes the view that morality (justice) arises out of a social contract (real or imaginary) which is supposed to have founded a social order. He reduces the idea of justice to two principles, provisionally stated (but later elaborated) as:.
“First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
Second: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all” p60
More generally, he states, “All social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the basis of self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage. Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all” p62. This is elaborated into two principles, the “efficiency” and the “difference” principles.
According to the efficiency principle, “a distribution of goods or a scheme of production is inefficient when there are ways of doing still better for some individuals without doing any worse for others.” What emerges from his discussion here is that there are many possible distributions of goods which coincide with this definition of efficiency.
The difference principle removes the indeterminateness of the principle of efficiency by singling out a particular position from which the social and economic inequalities of the basic structure are to be judged. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society p75.
True to the origins of these ideas in Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, the principles of social justice and therefore the social contract itself is understood as having created “the basic structure of society”, “They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages” p61 So he does not concern himself with small scale social institutions such as families, firms, villages, cities and the like. It is plain too that he regards the nation state as the unit of society with which he is concerned, and I fear that this society is identical with the United States of America. It is as though there is no other.
I do have a difficulty with this last approach. The problem is that, when one gets down to sociological brass tacks, there is (as Margaret Thatcher said, but did not understand) there is indeed “no such thing as society”, but rather an indefinite number of circumstances, social relationships and social institutions, all of which are different from each other and all of which emerge out of the action and social interactions of individuals.
It follows first of all that social contracts are to be discovered not merely in the ones considered to be part of “the basic structure of society” (whichever these may be thought to be), but rather as the basis for each and every small-scale social relationship and institution. It also follows that, whether a particular structure discoverable in human relationships has widespread or merely local significance, such a structure is likely to be subject to change and revision. Far from having to imagine an “original” position, a possibly fictitious moment when social structure came into existence, one can actually witness, in the unfolding of social interaction, the social contracts that arise in the day-by-day evolution of social institutions and relationships. From time to time, we make new contacts and form new relationships; and conversely relationships sometimes end or fall into disuse. But the social contracts which are formed in the course of such relationships do change over time. Of course, in society as in nature, some structures persist for years, decades, even centuries, while others are more fleeting. Nevertheless, to speak of “an original position” - as though the structure of social relations had been set up once for all – could often be misleading.
One feature of Rawls’s theory is the notion that, in the original position, the just deal can be made under a “veil of secrecy” (136-142). Those involved “do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case p136 and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations.
This idea evoked for me the traditional figure of Justice, which appears over countless law courts as a blindfolded woman. This image is typically taken to refer to the necessity of impartiality in the administration of justice. Rawls, however, appears to use this image as the basis for the formulation of the laws before they are administered.
According to him, to be just, laws must be made beneath such a veil of ignorance. “It is assumed, then, that the parties to the original social contract do not know certain kinds of particular facts. First of all, no one knows his place in society, his own position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psychology such as his aversion to risk or liablilty to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know it economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong. These broader restrictions on knowledge are appropriate in part because questions of social justice arise between generations as well as within them - - - -. As far as possible, then, the only particular facts which the parties know is that their society is subject to the circumstances of justice and whatever this implies“. p137
I fear that I find these ideas of Rawls difficult to cope with. For me, social contracts are made by flesh and blood individuals in the course of their social interaction. The notion of a contract taking place in such abstract circumstances seems to me decidedly odd.
Although I am suspicious of Rawls, I found this book interesting and important. Indeed, and again despite my reservations, I shall undoubtedly revisit it and maybe even change my opinions.
February 7, 2010
So, first off: this is a work of academic philosophy. I think it's very readable and entertaining for a work of academic philosophy, but this is probably not a book to take to the beach. It also helps if you've had a basic course in philosophy, or have recently read a book like Michael Sandel's Justice, because the book will be very hard going if you don't have at least a glimmer of an idea about utilitarianism or Kantianism.
So, why read Rawls? It's often asserted that Rawls's work is the philosophical basis for modern American liberalism. I think it would be more accurate to say that most modern American liberals have a set of intuitions about justice that happen to dovetail pretty well with Rawls's philosophy. But if you are a political liberal, and you feel it's important to have a sound philosophical basis for your liberalism, you've probably got to consider Rawls's position, even if you reject it.
Rawls starts with a pretty neat philosophical conceit: the idea that a just society is one that operates by rules that everyone would agree to if they chose a set of rules from behind "a veil of ignorance". In other words, without knowing what their society would look like, what position they might occupy in it, or even what sort of goals and interests they might have, what rules would people agree to be bound by? I like this idea, because it seems to me that you can accept the method without necessarily accepting Rawls's conclusions. Also, it seems to offer a way to get at an ethical conception that might not be so tightly bound to a particular philosopher's societal circumstances. Kantianism seems so well-suited to the mind-set of an Enlightenment German Protestant non-conformist that one can't help be a bit suspicious of its general applicability.
Though, in all fairness, I have to admit that the rules that Rawls comes up with seem very well suited to the mind-set of a mid-20th century American liberal. He proposes two rules for a just society, which are to be applied in the following order:
1. Everyone should have the maximum liberty that is consistent with everyone having the same liberty.
2. Social and economic advantages should be distributed under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and inequalities in the distribution of such advantages should be allowed only to the extent that such inequalities benefit the least well-favored in society.
We get to these rules about 100 pages in. The rest of the book is devoted to explaining what they mean and how they would be applied. It's fascinating stuff, but it defies easy summary. One of the most tricky parts of Rawls's theory is the part about inequalities benefitting the least well-favored - in fact, it's not unusual to see critiques of Rawls that focus exclusively on that, and ignore the rest of his argument. Occasionally you see people go on as if Rawls supported some kind of Harrison Bergeron-like state of absolute enforced equality. This seems silly, since it's hard to see how such a society would be consistent with the principle of maximum liberty (which takes priority over the other principle). Rawls potentially allows for staggeringly large degrees of economic or social inequality, as long as it can be demonstrated that these inequalities benefit the least well-off. Actually doing such a demonstration is left to the economists or the sociologists. Which makes a lot of sense. It's just a bit disappointing to read a 500+ page book on justice, and find that there are still lots of hard questions left to be answered.
Still, if forming a perfectly just society were easy, we'd have done it by now.
Anyway, this book is not an easy read, but it's well worth reading. I think that even if you disagree with its conclusions (or, like me, think you at least need more time to think about and digest its conclusions), it will change the way you think about justice.
So, why read Rawls? It's often asserted that Rawls's work is the philosophical basis for modern American liberalism. I think it would be more accurate to say that most modern American liberals have a set of intuitions about justice that happen to dovetail pretty well with Rawls's philosophy. But if you are a political liberal, and you feel it's important to have a sound philosophical basis for your liberalism, you've probably got to consider Rawls's position, even if you reject it.
Rawls starts with a pretty neat philosophical conceit: the idea that a just society is one that operates by rules that everyone would agree to if they chose a set of rules from behind "a veil of ignorance". In other words, without knowing what their society would look like, what position they might occupy in it, or even what sort of goals and interests they might have, what rules would people agree to be bound by? I like this idea, because it seems to me that you can accept the method without necessarily accepting Rawls's conclusions. Also, it seems to offer a way to get at an ethical conception that might not be so tightly bound to a particular philosopher's societal circumstances. Kantianism seems so well-suited to the mind-set of an Enlightenment German Protestant non-conformist that one can't help be a bit suspicious of its general applicability.
Though, in all fairness, I have to admit that the rules that Rawls comes up with seem very well suited to the mind-set of a mid-20th century American liberal. He proposes two rules for a just society, which are to be applied in the following order:
1. Everyone should have the maximum liberty that is consistent with everyone having the same liberty.
2. Social and economic advantages should be distributed under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and inequalities in the distribution of such advantages should be allowed only to the extent that such inequalities benefit the least well-favored in society.
We get to these rules about 100 pages in. The rest of the book is devoted to explaining what they mean and how they would be applied. It's fascinating stuff, but it defies easy summary. One of the most tricky parts of Rawls's theory is the part about inequalities benefitting the least well-favored - in fact, it's not unusual to see critiques of Rawls that focus exclusively on that, and ignore the rest of his argument. Occasionally you see people go on as if Rawls supported some kind of Harrison Bergeron-like state of absolute enforced equality. This seems silly, since it's hard to see how such a society would be consistent with the principle of maximum liberty (which takes priority over the other principle). Rawls potentially allows for staggeringly large degrees of economic or social inequality, as long as it can be demonstrated that these inequalities benefit the least well-off. Actually doing such a demonstration is left to the economists or the sociologists. Which makes a lot of sense. It's just a bit disappointing to read a 500+ page book on justice, and find that there are still lots of hard questions left to be answered.
Still, if forming a perfectly just society were easy, we'd have done it by now.
Anyway, this book is not an easy read, but it's well worth reading. I think that even if you disagree with its conclusions (or, like me, think you at least need more time to think about and digest its conclusions), it will change the way you think about justice.
December 30, 2022
"In a fight, a liberal is the first one to leave the room".---" Big Bill" Haywood". I once knew a Yale Professor of Political Science who declared "John Rawls will still be taught when people like me have long been forgotten." A rare burst of academic modesty. A THEORY OF JUSTICE is the ne plus ultra defense of Western liberalism, and for that reason alone it is required reading inside and outside the academy. Rawls' central idea in this apologia is summed up in a metaphor: Life is like a roulette wheel. You never know where your particular ball, meaning you, is going to land; in this case before you are born. So, why not design a society around the principle that the best roulette wheel is one where even if you land on the worst spot you will not be left to rot? The liberal roulette wheel guarantees you both personal and economic freedom, whereas conservative wheels are designed to protect property rights, from which other rights flow, and radical wheels, of both the left and the right, promise you a perfect landing spot; not just for you but everybody whose ball is cast. Just one thing though: obiter dicta Rawls once said "my theory of justice requires a modicum of economic development." That's like saying the Sahara desert only requires more rain to become habitable! Still, this liberal opus is worth the challenge of reading in full, either in defense or defiance of liberalism.
December 6, 2011
In "A Theory of Justice", John Rawls presents a conception of justice which, as he puts it, generalises and carries to a higher level of abstraction the social contract theory. So, rather than dictating the exact form of government to be applied, the persons in the Rawls' original position would, in trying to further their own interests, decide upon principles of justice to regulate the basic distributive structure of society. Concerned only with institutional justice, the theory dictates that individual distributions are just to the extent that they are made through just institutions.
Rawls’ version of the social contract differs from earlier social contract theories in some regards. First, while the original position is Rawls’ equivalent to the state of nature of some earlier theories, he stresses that the original position should not be seen as a historical state, but rather as a hypothetical situation in which the goal is to decide upon a conception of justice. Second, as mentioned earlier, Rawls’ version carries the social contract theory to a higher level of abstraction. While most other social contract theories appeal directly to the judgment of the reader in deciding how society is to be organized, Rawls takes the idea one step further by asking us to imagine to which conclusion people with certain defined properties would come when placed in the original position. Third, there are some restrictions to the choices made in the initial situation. For example, Rawls takes for granted that people in the original position would rather have some form of government than, say, anarchy. Finally, Rawls assumes that the parties in the original position are all looking to securing so-called primary goods which, according to Rawls, are things that every rational person wants, no matter what his or her goals are in life, including such things as liberties, opportunities and wealth.
The concept of justice as fairness comes, Rawls argues, not from the idea that justice and fairness are the same, but from the fact that agreements and conclusions are reached in a fair original position. Thus, since the original position is fair, the agreements reached in it are fair, too. Rawls further argues that since the conception of justice agreed upon in the original position is fair, it would bring us as close as we could come to a society in which people have explicitly consented to a certain conception of justice. The idea of justice as fairness is further enforced by the participants in the original position being rational, mutually disinterested, informed in certain areas and lacking knowledge in others. The lack of knowledge about advantageous or disadvantageous natural endowments and social circumstances eliminates a biased conception of justice.
To Rawls, it is important that the idea of justice as fairness contrasts that of utilitarianism. He argues that classical utilitarianism, in only looking to maximise utility regardless of how it is divided between individuals, does not take seriously the distinction between persons. He further claims that utilitarianism would not be chosen by the parties in the original position because of the possibility of an enormously disadvantageous division of utility. While this choice admittedly would be made entirely out of self-interest, it is nevertheless effective as an argument in favour of Rawls' idea of justice as fairness.
The principles of justice that the persons in the original position would decide upon are, as Rawls presents them in his book, the following:
1.First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others (Liberty Principle.)
2.Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage (Difference Principle,) and attached to positions and offices open to all (Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity.)
The first and second principles form the special conception of justice while the general conception of justice is the Difference Principle applied to all social values, phrased by Rawls thus: “All social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage.” Later, Rawls changes “everyone's advantage” to “the greatest benefit of the least advantaged” and “the advantage of the least favored” in the Difference Principle and the general conception of justice, respectively. This is not a change in the theory, Rawls would argue, since he holds that if the least advantaged are benefited, so will everyone else.
The general conception of justice, Rawls claims, applies to a society in which the social conditions of some restrict them from exercising their basic liberties. When that standard has been reached, the special conception of justice takes over. Within the special conception of justice, there is a lexicographical ordering of principles. The Liberty Principle is placed above the Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity which, in turn, is placed above the Difference Principle. Only when the conditions of the Liberty Principle have been met does the Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity come into play, and so on.
The reason for dividing the theory into the general and special conceptions of justice, as touched upon earlier, is that unless a level of adequate social conditions is reached, people cannot make use of their basic liberties. Furthermore, Rawls claims that there is a relation between the social conditions in which we find ourselves and how greatly we value liberty. As our social conditions improve, we start to value liberty more and welfare less. When we reach a point at which we value welfare and liberty equally, we can be said to have reached a level of adequate social conditions. Rawls argues that by applying the general conception of justice, this level can hopefully be reached, prompting a switch from the general to the special conception of justice.
Arguably, there are some difficulties in the application of the two conceptions of justice on a given society. For one, it seems hard to pin down exactly where to draw the line between adequate and inadequate social conditions. While Rawls does provide some guidelines for this purpose, he does not explain in detail at which point, exactly, the switch between the conceptions would take place. Presumably, the level of adequate social conditions is not invariable. Depending on the nation in which the principles of justice are to be applied, this level must be subject to some variations. For example, if the nation is wealthy, the level of adequate social conditions is presumed to rise. Nevertheless, the idea remains vague and arguably subjective.
Another difficulty is that even though the general conception of justice dictates that all social values are to be distributed so as to make the least advantaged as well off as possible, it allows for this distribution to be unequal. This means that while the worst off might reach a level of adequate social conditions, there is a possibility of inequalities growing as a consequence, which result in higher standards of living and higher requirements on people, for example in regards to work opportunities. Indeed, as the general level of well-being rises, so does the level at which we define adequate social conditions. And so, because the level of adequate social conditions constantly changes, we are just as often forced to switch between the general conception and the special conception of justice, resulting in what Rawls would like to avoid; an unstable society.
Rawls’ version of the social contract differs from earlier social contract theories in some regards. First, while the original position is Rawls’ equivalent to the state of nature of some earlier theories, he stresses that the original position should not be seen as a historical state, but rather as a hypothetical situation in which the goal is to decide upon a conception of justice. Second, as mentioned earlier, Rawls’ version carries the social contract theory to a higher level of abstraction. While most other social contract theories appeal directly to the judgment of the reader in deciding how society is to be organized, Rawls takes the idea one step further by asking us to imagine to which conclusion people with certain defined properties would come when placed in the original position. Third, there are some restrictions to the choices made in the initial situation. For example, Rawls takes for granted that people in the original position would rather have some form of government than, say, anarchy. Finally, Rawls assumes that the parties in the original position are all looking to securing so-called primary goods which, according to Rawls, are things that every rational person wants, no matter what his or her goals are in life, including such things as liberties, opportunities and wealth.
The concept of justice as fairness comes, Rawls argues, not from the idea that justice and fairness are the same, but from the fact that agreements and conclusions are reached in a fair original position. Thus, since the original position is fair, the agreements reached in it are fair, too. Rawls further argues that since the conception of justice agreed upon in the original position is fair, it would bring us as close as we could come to a society in which people have explicitly consented to a certain conception of justice. The idea of justice as fairness is further enforced by the participants in the original position being rational, mutually disinterested, informed in certain areas and lacking knowledge in others. The lack of knowledge about advantageous or disadvantageous natural endowments and social circumstances eliminates a biased conception of justice.
To Rawls, it is important that the idea of justice as fairness contrasts that of utilitarianism. He argues that classical utilitarianism, in only looking to maximise utility regardless of how it is divided between individuals, does not take seriously the distinction between persons. He further claims that utilitarianism would not be chosen by the parties in the original position because of the possibility of an enormously disadvantageous division of utility. While this choice admittedly would be made entirely out of self-interest, it is nevertheless effective as an argument in favour of Rawls' idea of justice as fairness.
The principles of justice that the persons in the original position would decide upon are, as Rawls presents them in his book, the following:
1.First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others (Liberty Principle.)
2.Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both reasonably expected to be to everyone's advantage (Difference Principle,) and attached to positions and offices open to all (Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity.)
The first and second principles form the special conception of justice while the general conception of justice is the Difference Principle applied to all social values, phrased by Rawls thus: “All social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage.” Later, Rawls changes “everyone's advantage” to “the greatest benefit of the least advantaged” and “the advantage of the least favored” in the Difference Principle and the general conception of justice, respectively. This is not a change in the theory, Rawls would argue, since he holds that if the least advantaged are benefited, so will everyone else.
The general conception of justice, Rawls claims, applies to a society in which the social conditions of some restrict them from exercising their basic liberties. When that standard has been reached, the special conception of justice takes over. Within the special conception of justice, there is a lexicographical ordering of principles. The Liberty Principle is placed above the Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity which, in turn, is placed above the Difference Principle. Only when the conditions of the Liberty Principle have been met does the Principle of Fair Equality of Opportunity come into play, and so on.
The reason for dividing the theory into the general and special conceptions of justice, as touched upon earlier, is that unless a level of adequate social conditions is reached, people cannot make use of their basic liberties. Furthermore, Rawls claims that there is a relation between the social conditions in which we find ourselves and how greatly we value liberty. As our social conditions improve, we start to value liberty more and welfare less. When we reach a point at which we value welfare and liberty equally, we can be said to have reached a level of adequate social conditions. Rawls argues that by applying the general conception of justice, this level can hopefully be reached, prompting a switch from the general to the special conception of justice.
Arguably, there are some difficulties in the application of the two conceptions of justice on a given society. For one, it seems hard to pin down exactly where to draw the line between adequate and inadequate social conditions. While Rawls does provide some guidelines for this purpose, he does not explain in detail at which point, exactly, the switch between the conceptions would take place. Presumably, the level of adequate social conditions is not invariable. Depending on the nation in which the principles of justice are to be applied, this level must be subject to some variations. For example, if the nation is wealthy, the level of adequate social conditions is presumed to rise. Nevertheless, the idea remains vague and arguably subjective.
Another difficulty is that even though the general conception of justice dictates that all social values are to be distributed so as to make the least advantaged as well off as possible, it allows for this distribution to be unequal. This means that while the worst off might reach a level of adequate social conditions, there is a possibility of inequalities growing as a consequence, which result in higher standards of living and higher requirements on people, for example in regards to work opportunities. Indeed, as the general level of well-being rises, so does the level at which we define adequate social conditions. And so, because the level of adequate social conditions constantly changes, we are just as often forced to switch between the general conception and the special conception of justice, resulting in what Rawls would like to avoid; an unstable society.
January 12, 2012
John Rawls presents the reader with a thought experiment based on the social contract, original position, and his very own "veil of ignorance."
So this thought experiment is a hypothetical situation that is really just a very dull gambling scheme where the players must make decisions about the structure of society. The thing that's supposed to be so revolutionary is that these players aren't aware of their position in society and they don't really know anything about their own identity, except that they have an identity and that they are REALLY goddamn rational, like REALLY rational.
Rawls, for some reason, views this as an optimal environment for determining a theory of justice...a theory of justice which is amazingly consistent with the ideals of the republican nation-state.
Unexamined Classical Liberalism tempered by a degraded view of distributive justice.
OK, then.
It's possible that John Rawls does more to defend his position in later works or that I did not pay heed to some of his defenses within this book. Granted, his theory does have some admirable aims, it just doesn't really hold together as a justification for anything, really.
He's such an influential figure in legal and political philosophy, that it is striking how bleak and unimaginitive his philosophy is.
I am all ears for hearing defenses of his position. I know I'm being somewhat flippant in this review, but I really am interested in a serious discussion of Rawls's merits and drawbacks.
So this thought experiment is a hypothetical situation that is really just a very dull gambling scheme where the players must make decisions about the structure of society. The thing that's supposed to be so revolutionary is that these players aren't aware of their position in society and they don't really know anything about their own identity, except that they have an identity and that they are REALLY goddamn rational, like REALLY rational.
Rawls, for some reason, views this as an optimal environment for determining a theory of justice...a theory of justice which is amazingly consistent with the ideals of the republican nation-state.
Unexamined Classical Liberalism tempered by a degraded view of distributive justice.
OK, then.
It's possible that John Rawls does more to defend his position in later works or that I did not pay heed to some of his defenses within this book. Granted, his theory does have some admirable aims, it just doesn't really hold together as a justification for anything, really.
He's such an influential figure in legal and political philosophy, that it is striking how bleak and unimaginitive his philosophy is.
I am all ears for hearing defenses of his position. I know I'm being somewhat flippant in this review, but I really am interested in a serious discussion of Rawls's merits and drawbacks.
July 26, 2014
I'll just say, like a good number of philosophers, Rawls is not a good writer. His book is repetitive and not anywhere near as concise as it could have been. I was actually rereading it this time out, having read it in school, and was not as taken with it this time out.
Pros:
1. The Veil of Ignorance is a great thought experiment, one of the all time greats. Rawls establishes the Kantian idea of autonomous action perfectly. Too bad he quickly abandons Kant and instead creates something more similar to rule consequentialism.
2. Rawls does make a good alternative to something like Nozick and demolishes most of the right wing libertarians most cherished ideas. However, this is really just a good cop bad cop situation. Most American universities teach Rawls and Nozick together, perhaps in the idea that seeing the horror that is Nozick we'll all warm up to Rawls a little better.
Cons:
1. Rawls is obsessed with Utility calculations. While Nozick gives us an essentially egoist consequentialism with "side constraints" Rawls basically gives us rule utilitarianism. So we get no foundation for rights only an idea that citizens should get equal liberty to others.
2. Rawls also insists that political philosophy is not simply applied ethical philosophy. This may be true, but it leaves him on shaky meta-ethical ground. Like rule consequentialism it looks like Rawls's theory just morphs into whatever is convenient based on the situation.
Pros:
1. The Veil of Ignorance is a great thought experiment, one of the all time greats. Rawls establishes the Kantian idea of autonomous action perfectly. Too bad he quickly abandons Kant and instead creates something more similar to rule consequentialism.
2. Rawls does make a good alternative to something like Nozick and demolishes most of the right wing libertarians most cherished ideas. However, this is really just a good cop bad cop situation. Most American universities teach Rawls and Nozick together, perhaps in the idea that seeing the horror that is Nozick we'll all warm up to Rawls a little better.
Cons:
1. Rawls is obsessed with Utility calculations. While Nozick gives us an essentially egoist consequentialism with "side constraints" Rawls basically gives us rule utilitarianism. So we get no foundation for rights only an idea that citizens should get equal liberty to others.
2. Rawls also insists that political philosophy is not simply applied ethical philosophy. This may be true, but it leaves him on shaky meta-ethical ground. Like rule consequentialism it looks like Rawls's theory just morphs into whatever is convenient based on the situation.
November 18, 2013
This book, assigned for Dave Schweickart's Social and Political Philosophy course, was far and away the most important book I read while studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. As usual, while only part of it was required for class, I read the whole of it.
Rawls' book is important for, among other reasons, being a example of applied ethics relevant to everyone, everywhere, in situations ranging from family politics to constitutional conventions. His approach is substantially Kantian and contractarian, the latter aspect of which should be immediately familiar to citizens of the USA as it represents very much the Enlightenment political theory embodied in the history and theory of American constitutionalism.
From the perspective of the class wherein this book was studied, the issue which most exercised the teacher--and, through him, us--was whether or not Rawls fully recognized the economic--indeed, socialist--implications of his assumptions and arguments.
Rawls' book is important for, among other reasons, being a example of applied ethics relevant to everyone, everywhere, in situations ranging from family politics to constitutional conventions. His approach is substantially Kantian and contractarian, the latter aspect of which should be immediately familiar to citizens of the USA as it represents very much the Enlightenment political theory embodied in the history and theory of American constitutionalism.
From the perspective of the class wherein this book was studied, the issue which most exercised the teacher--and, through him, us--was whether or not Rawls fully recognized the economic--indeed, socialist--implications of his assumptions and arguments.
January 29, 2018
Although he's liberalism's pet philosopher, the important concepts in this book are completely misguided: http://nooilforpacifists.blogspot.com... Not understanding economics, he basises justice on a "fairness" (the famous "veil of ignorance") dis-coupled from economic reality and markets. It fails to account for progress, productivity, and the possibility of change. In the end, Rawls was neither a philosopher, nor a moralist--he was a liberal scold, who (regrettably) lives on providing aid and comfort to extreme movements such as "Occupy Wall Street" and environmental "back-to-the-Stone Age" doomsayers.
March 8, 2008
If Rawls had understood expected utility theory this book would be better -- and unrecognisable. His response to decision making under uncertainty is iconoclastic, and absurd.
February 14, 2017
جان رالز با وام گرفتن ایده قرارداد اجتماعی هابز، لاک و ... نظریه ای در باب عدالت اجتماعی طرح ریزی می کند، "عدالت به مثابه انصاف". جهت جلوگیری از تاثیر پذیرفتن توافق/قرارداد آغازین از پیشایندی های طبیعی و اجتماعی (استعدادهای فردی و طبقه اجتماعی متفاوت و ...)، افراد حاضر در توافق آغازین رالز در پس پرده بی خبری قرار دارند؛ بدین معنا که شناخت کلی ای از انسان، جامعه انسانی و شرایط بسترساز عدالت دارند و هر گونه اطلاعات جزئی ای که به تامین منافع شخصی افراد بیانجامد بر ایشان پوشیده است. طرف های قرارداد از میان برداشت های مختلف عدالت (فایده گرایی کلاسیک و میانگین، شهود گرایی و دو اصل عدالت رالز) یکی را برمی گزینند. پیشنهادی که رالز از دو اصل عدالت خویش ارائه می دهد به شرح زیر است، البته در حین استدلال طولانی ارائه شده، این اصول جرح و تعدیل هایی می پذیرند و ترتیب قاموسی اصول نیز ارائه می شود.
بخش اول کتاب به توجیه شرایط آغازین و دلایل ترجیح دو اصل عدالت به دیگر نظریه های سنت فلسفه اخلاقی اختصاص یافته است. رالز در بخش دوم کتاب اقسام نهادهایی را که عدالت تجویز می کند و انواع تکالیف و وظایفی را که بر دوش افراد می گذارد، بررسی می کند. در بخش پایانی کتاب رالز بررسی می کند که آیا سرشت انسان بگونه ای است که امکان عملی شدن برداشت عدالت به مثابه انصاف را فراهم آورد یا نه.
نقاط ضعف: استدلال رالز بسیار طویل و دراز است و گاها ارتباط بین مباحث ارائه شده چندان روشن نیست. شیوه ارائه استدلال هم بسیار انتزاعی است و بندرت از مثال هایی برای عینیت بخشیدن به مخاطب بهره می گیرد.
نقاط قوت: فکر نمیکنم بتوانم از عهده توصیف عظمت نظریه رالز برآیم؛ فقط به این اکتفا میکنم که بسیار راهگشاست. نظریه عدالت به مثابه انصاف حاصل نبوغ و حس عدالت طلبی ای است که از کودکی در وجود رالز ریشه دوانده است. از تواضع ستودنی رالز هم ناگفته نباید گذشت، هر جا که اندیشه ای از کسی وام گرفته یا انتقاداتی در اندیشه اش موثر واقع شده در پی نوشت ها به آن اشاره نموده و خاضعانه اعلام می کند که مفهوم پرده بی خبری در نظریه اخلاقی کانت نهفته است.
اصل نخست: هر کس حقی برابر در برخورداری از گسترده ترین نظام آزادی های برابر دارد، نظامی که سازگار است با نظام آزادی ای از همین دست برای دیگران.
اصل دوم: نابرابری های اجتماعی و اقتصادی را باید به گونه ای سامان داد که هم (الف) بیشترین سود مورد انتظار را برای محروم ترین اعضای جامعه در پی داشته باشند و هم (ب) برای مناصب و موقعیت هایی که تحت شرایط برابری منصفانه فرصت ها باب شان برای همه گشوده است، در نظر گرفته شوند.
بخش اول کتاب به توجیه شرایط آغازین و دلایل ترجیح دو اصل عدالت به دیگر نظریه های سنت فلسفه اخلاقی اختصاص یافته است. رالز در بخش دوم کتاب اقسام نهادهایی را که عدالت تجویز می کند و انواع تکالیف و وظایفی را که بر دوش افراد می گذارد، بررسی می کند. در بخش پایانی کتاب رالز بررسی می کند که آیا سرشت انسان بگونه ای است که امکان عملی شدن برداشت عدالت به مثابه انصاف را فراهم آورد یا نه.
نقاط ضعف: استدلال رالز بسیار طویل و دراز است و گاها ارتباط بین مباحث ارائه شده چندان روشن نیست. شیوه ارائه استدلال هم بسیار انتزاعی است و بندرت از مثال هایی برای عینیت بخشیدن به مخاطب بهره می گیرد.
نقاط قوت: فکر نمیکنم بتوانم از عهده توصیف عظمت نظریه رالز برآیم؛ فقط به این اکتفا میکنم که بسیار راهگشاست. نظریه عدالت به مثابه انصاف حاصل نبوغ و حس عدالت طلبی ای است که از کودکی در وجود رالز ریشه دوانده است. از تواضع ستودنی رالز هم ناگفته نباید گذشت، هر جا که اندیشه ای از کسی وام گرفته یا انتقاداتی در اندیشه اش موثر واقع شده در پی نوشت ها به آن اشاره نموده و خاضعانه اعلام می کند که مفهوم پرده بی خبری در نظریه اخلاقی کانت نهفته است.
February 27, 2008
Ok, I didn't read all of this one. Basically he argues that society should be based in a way that any good should help everyone. Against exploitation of the poorest for the benefit of the rich, which is a fair argument. However, he also argues that growth should not happen just for the rich while leaving the poor behind. Too much equalization of opportunity at the tax payers' expense for my liking. His political theory is however integral to understanding the trend of government over the past 50-60 years. Rawls tries to explain and quantify and give name to the theories of justice behind the workings of the time. He calls his theory justice as fairness.
February 16, 2018
Read this while writing my Ph.D. thesis back in 1998. Time flies.
July 29, 2017
צדק, צדק תרדוף (דברים, ט"ז, כ´) בדצמבר 2010 יצא לאור, בשעה טובה, התרגום הראשון לעברית של התיאוריה שהשפיעה על המחשבה הפוליטית והחברתית ב- 30 שנים האחרונות מאז פרסומה בצורתה המקורית בשנת 1971. כמו כל תיאוריה פוליטית וכלכלית אחרת שמגיעה אלינו מארה"ב, לקח קצת זמן אבל הינה היא כאן בצורתה המתוקנת והמעודכנת "צדק כהוגנות", הצגה מחודשת הכוללת מענה למבקרים ומקטרגים של התיאוריה המקורית שפירסם רולס בספרו שחולל מהפכה מחשבתית – "Theory of Justice".
אם כן, מהו צדק? האם לדוגמא הענישה של הפוגע בשחר גרינשפן, שאחותה, יעל גרינשפן, יצאה ועוררה גלים גבוהים ברשת ומחוצה לה, היתה באמת לא צודקת? (כן, היא היתה לא צודקת במובן שחומרת הענישה לא התאימה לחומרת הפגיעה וכך הגמול של הפוגע לא התאים למעשה) כיצד ניתן להתייחס לטענות של אי צדק חלוקתי שעלו במסגרת הרפורמה במיסוי תגליות הגז? (טענת ה"מ��יע לי" מתייחסת לאפשרות עשיית צדק במסגרת חלוקת המשאבים וההון לכלל הציבור ולא לקבוצה קטנה) וכיצד ניתן להשיג את הצדק במסגרת חברתית הוגנת?
אחד מהכשרים של בני אדם החיים בחברה, היא היכולת המוסרית לחוש צדק, להבין וליישם את עקרונותיו. צדק הוא מושג חמקמק וקשה להגדרה. הקושי בהגדרה מתגבר לנוכח העידן הפוסט מודרניסטי, הרואה בסובייקטיבי חזות הכל. אין אמת אחת, אין טוב אחד ומה שיכול להיתפס כצודק עבורי, יכול להיתפס כלא צודק עבור אחר. שאלת הצדק העסיקה דורות של הוגים מדיספלינות פילוסופיות וסוציולוגיות, שהבולט בינהם, זה שחולל מהפך חשיבתי והשפיע על תחומי חשיבה רבים במאה ה- 20, הוא ג´ון בורדלי רולס.
חיים ראויים "כיצד יכולתי להתפלל ולבקש מאלוהים שיעזור לי, או למשפחתי, או לארצי, או לכל דבר יקר אחר שהיה קרוב לליבי, בעוד שאלוהים לא היה נכון להושיע מיליונים של יהודים מידיו של היטלר?..." (38)
ג´ון בורדלי רולס נולד ב- 21 בפברואר 1921 בבולטימור, השני בחמשת בניהם של וויליאם לי ואנה אבל רולס. רולס גדל במשפחה מבוססת בה שני הוריו גילו עיניין רב בפוליטיקה והיו פעילים פוליטיים בארה"ב של שנות ה- 40. ג´ון היה קרוב במיוחד לאימו שהנחילה לו את תחושת הצדק בפעילותה למען זכויות נשים. בהשפעתה הוא החל בצעירותו להרהר הירהורים בשאלות של גזע ומעמד. בעיקר חוויותיו מהילדות עוררו אצלו תחושת אי צדק באשר לאפרו אמריקאים ולהזדמנויות של הלבנים העניים להתפתח ולרכוש חינוך טוב. בשנת 1939 החל את לימודיו בפרינסטון והושפע מאד מאחד המורים הראשונים שלו נורמן מאלקולם. בסמסטר אביב של 1942 לקח רולס קורס נוסף עם מאלקולם שעסק בנושא הרוע האנושי. הקורס הצית אצלו עיניין רדום שהיה לו בדת והוביל אותו לכתיבת התזה שלו בנושא. בינואר 1943 סיים רולס את לימודי ה- BAשלו בפילוסופיה בהצטיינות והתגייס לצבא. במהלך שירותו התנסויותיו במלחמה נטלו ממנו את אמונתו בנצרות האורתודוכסית.
במאמר קצר שפורסם במלואו רק בשנת 2009, הוא כותב: "כדי לפרש את ההיסטוריה כמבטאת את רצון האלוהים, על רצון האלוהים להיות הולם את מושגי הצדק הבסיסיים ביותר כפי שאלה מוכרים לנו. הרי מה עוד יכול הצדק הבסיסי ביותר להיות?..."(39)
ב- 1946 חזר לפרינסון ובמהלך שנת 50 סיים לכתוב את עבודת הדוקטורט שלו. בעשור שבין 1962 – 1971 השלים רולס את עבודתו הגדולה והמהפכנית "A Theory of Justice". שנות השישים נחשבות לשנים סוערות מבחינה פוליטית בארה"ב. שנות ה- 60 המאוחרות עמדו בסימן מלחמת ויאטנם, מלחמה שרולס האמין שאינה צודקת. שנים אלה הותירו רישומן בתיאוריה שלו שנכתבה באותה התקופה. אי אפשר להפריז בחשיבות הגותו של רולס. "A Theory of Justice" חולל מהפך בדיון הפילוסופי פוליטי. גם לאחר פירסום התיאוריה המשיך רולס בעבודתו הפוריה ובמשך למעלה מ-50 שנות פעילותו, הוא יצר תיאוריה פוליטית מקיפה שהשפיעה לא רק על התחום הפילוסופי פוליטי אלא גם על תחומים נוספים: משפטים, מדעי המדינה וכלכלה. תיאוריה של צדק תורגמה ל- 27 שפות ונמכרה במאות אלפי עותקים.
אלפי מאמרי בעד ונגד נכתבו על התיאוריה ומרכזיותה באה לידי ביטוי באמירתו של נוזיק (מתנגדו הגדול של רולס): "קשה למצוא בתקופה זו טקסט פוליטי תיאורטי העוסק בשאלות של צדק, שאינו מתייחס לתיאוריית הצדק של רולס" (מתוך אחרית הדבר , עמ´ 363). "צדק כהוגנות", הוא ניסיון לניסוח מחדש, ניסוח מדוייק של רעיונותיו לאור השינויים הרבים שעברה התיאוריה מאז פירסומה ב- 1971. זוהי התיאוריה מעודכנת והמותאמת לשינויים הפוליטיים והיא מתמודדת עם רוח הזמן תוך שהיא מהוות גם מענה למתנגדיו ולמבקריו.
ניסוי מחשבתי "דבר שגור הוא בפילוסופיה המוסרית, לדרוש שעקרונות ראשוניים יהיו כלליים ואוניברסליים. עקרונות הם כלליים כאשר ניתן לנסחם ללא שימוש בשמות פרטיים או בתיאורים מיידעים מוסווים. הם אוניברסליים כאשר ניתן להחילם על כל אחד מנשאי המוסר, ובמקרה שלנו על כל אחד מן האזרחים בחברה שבה מדובר, בלי שהדבר יהיה כרוך בחוסר עקביות או בחוסר לכידות המביס את עצמו." (191)
בני אדם נולדים לתוך חברה שכבר מוסדרת על ידי עקרונות צדק כאלה ואחרים. מתי, כיצד ואיך התקבלו אותם עקרונות? לשם כך מאמץ רולס את המצב המקורי בו אנשים נמצאים מאחורי "מסך בערות" היפותטי וא-היסטורי. "מסך הבערות" מאפשר לרולס לבחון את ההתנהגות החברתית והפוליטית של האנשים כשהם טבולה רסה, נקיים מדעות קדומות על גזע, השתייכות, מין, נסיבות ומקרים מיוחדים. חמושים ברציונליות ובהיותם חופשיים ושווים כשיוסר "סמך הבערות" נגלה, מנימוקים שונים, כי אותם אנשים בחרו ב"צדק כהוגנות" כעקרונות צדק המסדירים את הפעילות החברתית. בכלל זה, יאמצו האנשים מאחורי מסך הבערות את "עיקרון ההפרשים" כעיקרון צדק על פיו יחולקו הטובין (על כלל משמעויותיהם הנגזרות כולל חרויות, כבוד, עושר, קניין, זכויות ועוד) בחברה כך שהפערים אם קיימים יתרמו באופן אפקטיבי ביותר לתועלתם של הנחשלים ביותר ללא קשר לפערים בהכנסה וברווחים. רוצה לאמר, בתנאים שבהם למשתתפים החברתיים אין מושג קלוש לגבי העולם החיצוני ותנאיו, היותנו רציונליים (מחשבים חישובים של רווח והפסד), חוש הצדק החברתי והרצון לשמר את האיזון כך שלא יופר במערכת, יוביל אותנו לפעול כך שהנשכרים ביותר יהיו הנחשלים ביותר חברתית.
צדק "בתולדות המחשבה הדמוקרטית ניתן מקום בולט לשני רעיונות נוגדים של החברה: האחד הוא רעיון החברה כמערכת הוגנת של שיתוף פעולה חברתי בין אזרחים הנחשבים לחופשיים ושווים; האחר הוא רעיון החברה כמערכת חברתית המאורגנת כך שתפיק את מרב האושר, המחושב כסכום תועלותיהם של כל בני החברה, כאשר אותו האושר הוא אושר מלא, המאופיין ע"י דוקטרינה מקפת..." (205)
בלב המוטיבציה של התיאוריה הרולסיאנית, צדק כהוגנות, עומדת ההתמודדות עם התועלתנות כתפיסה פוליטית חלופית הגורסת כי כלל המעשים של המדינה ואזרחיה מכוונים להגדלת התועלת הכללית. במשך מאות של הגות פוליטית נעשו ניסיונות להצדיק את קיום המדינה, את סמכותה ואת חובתם של האזרחים לציית לכפייה של חוקיה. תיאוריות פילוסופיות פוליטיות שעוסקות בהסכמה של בני האדם לקבל על עצמם את מרות מוסדות השילטון, מכונות תיאוריות אמנה חברתית. בין ההוגים שגיבשו תיאוריות אמנה, ניתן למנות את הובס, רוסו וג´ון לוק. בשלב הראשון, רולס עוסק בחברה הדמוקרטית על מוסדותיה הפוליטיים והחברתיים, שכן לטענתו רק בחברה כזו יכולים להתקיים תנאים של צדק חברתי. אם כן, הצדק בחברה עומד על שני עקרונות : על העיקרון כי לכל אדם הזכות הבלתי ניתנת לעירעור לתבוע חירויות יסוד שוות המתיישבות עם מערכת שלמה של חירויות לכל האחרים. הצדק הרולסיאני נשען על זכות מוקנית לקשת רחבה של חירויות המבטיחות הפעלתם של שני כשרים מוסריים: הכושר לחוש צדק, כלומר היכולת להבין וליישם את עקרונות הצדק הפוליטי. והיכולת לתפוס טוב, לתקן את התפיסה ולקדם אותה באורח רציונלי. ועל העיקרון כי פערים חברתיים וכלכליים ניתנים להצדקה בשני תנאים: בתנאי של שיוויון הזדמנויות הוגן ובתנאי שבו אי שוויון כלכלי וחברתי יפעל לטובת בני החברה שהם "הנחשלים ביותר" (מכונה גם עיקרון הפער) תפקידה של החברה לתקן פגמים שנופלים בשוויון הזדמנויות פורמלי. קרי על מנת שהחברה תהיה צודקת לא רק שיש לאפשר שוויון הזדמנויות אלא ש��כול החברים בקבוצה יהיה סיכוי הוגן להשיגם תוך כדי כך שהחברה חייבת להנהיג הזדמנויות חינוך שוות לכולם. בהציבו את העיקרון הראשון בקדימות על פני השני, רולס שולל פעולות המרה בין זכויות וחירויות המוקנות ע"י העיקרון הראשון לבין תועלות חברתיות וכלכליות. כך שחברה צודקת אליבא רולס, מחוייבת בנקיטת צעדים אופרטיביים ולא רק רעיוניים או עיוניים. או במילים אחרות על הצדק להיעשות ולהראות. כל זה טוב ויפה, אולם, כשאני מביטה סביבי אני בספק אם העקרונות הרולסיאנים פועלים במציאות הקיימת או איי פעם התקיימו והאם קיימת חברה שבה אפשרי לפעול במסגרת הנחות אלו?
מדינה "...במדינה דמוקרטית מודרנית החירויות השוות הן, הלכה למעשה, פורמליות בלבד? אף שנדמה - כך ממשיכה הביקורת- כי זכויות וחירויות היסוד של האזרחים שוות באופן תקף, שהרי לכולם הזכות להצביע, הזכות להתמודד על משרות פוליטיות ולהשתתף בפוליטיקה המפלגתית, וכן הלאה, הנה הפערים החברתיים והכלכליים במוסדות הרקע הם בדרך כלל כה גדולים , כך שהעשירים יותר ובעלי המעמד הגבוה שולטים בדרך כלל בחיים הפוליטיים, ומחוקקים חוקים וקווי מדיניות חברתיים המקדמים את האינטרסים האישיים שלהם" (282 - 283)
לאחר שגיבש את תפיסת הצדק פועל רולס לדיון בהרחבה בשאלות של נאותות הצדק במשטרים השונים. רולס מציג חמישה סוגי משטרים : קפיטליזם נוסח לז אפייר (Laissez - fair), שמוכר לנו כקפיטליזם חזירי, הדוגל באי התערבות של המדינה (או מדוייק יותר אי התערבות של המדינה כשהדברים נוגעים לאזרח הקטן). רולס טוען שהסדריו הבסיסיים של משטר זה מבטיחים שיוויון פורמלי בלבד כי הם מתבססים על ערכים כמו יעילות וצמיחה כלכלית שמבטיחות מינימום הכרחי בלבד. מדינת רווחה קפיטליסטית . גם במקרה זה רולס טוען שההסדרים של משטר זה גם לא מקדמים את עקרונות הצדק של "צדק כהוגנות" כי הוא מתיר פערים נרחבים מאוד בבעלות על קיניין וכך השליטה בכלכלה ובחלק מהחיים הפוליטיים נותרת בידים מצומצמות. כתוצאה מכך במצב של פערים חברתיים וכלכליים גדולים, עלול להתפתח במשטר מסוג זה תת מעמד מיואש ומדוכא הנסמך על העברות רווחה ובכך מעמד שלם לא משתתף בחיים הפוליטיים. סוציאליזם. נשלל בשל ריכוזיות השליטה בכלכלה והפוליטיקה. למעשה רק שני משטרים מבטיחים מימוש של הערך ההוגן של חירויות פוליטיות ומבטיחות שיוויון הזדמנויות הוגן: דמוקרטיה של בעליי יניין ומשטר ליברלי סוציאליסטי. ההבדל בינהם נעוץ בכך שבדמוקרטיה של בעלי קיניין, המוסדות החברתיים והפוליטיים פועלים כדי לבזר את הבעלות על הרכוש וההון ובכך למנוע מחלק קטן בחברה להשתלט על הכלכלה, ובעקיפין גם על החיים הפוליטיים. נראה לכם כמו משהו שנדרש במדינה שלנו בדחיפות? רולס מציע הסדרים כמו מימון ציבורי לבחירות והגבלות על תרומות לתעמולת בחירות, הבטחת יתר שיוויון בגישה לכלי התקשורת הציבוריים ותקנות מסויימות בנוגע לחופש הדיבור והעיתונות. רולס מודע להתנגשות בין חירויות היסוד אולם חירויות אלה אינן מוחלטות מהחירויות הפוליטיות ולערובה לערכן ההוגן.
סיום "בחברה מוסדרת היטב, תפיסת הצדק הציבורית מספקת איפוא נקודת מבט מוכרת באופן הדדי, שממנה האזרחים יכולים להפנות את תביעותיהם לנאותות ��וליטית כלפי מוסדותיהם הפוליטיים, או אף להכריע בין תביעותיהם השונות..." (81)
במשך השנים מאז פירסומה של התיאוריה, בשנת 1971, נכתבו תילי תילים של מסמכים ופרשנויות על התיאוריה. ביקורות רבות ניתכו על התיאוריה הרולסיאנית ובמהלך הספר רולס מתייחס אליהן, תוך תיקון התיאוריה וכיוונונה. ניתן לקרוא על הביקורות לתיאוריה של רולס וה��יאוריות המתחרות שצמחו לה במסמך שנמצא בקישור הזה – http://politics.huji.ac.il/shlomisega... למרות הביקורות, כבודה של התיאוריה מונח במקומה בהעלאת שאלות וסוגיות של שיוויון, אחריות וגמול ראויים בחברה. לא מדובר בצדק שיוויוני, אלא בצדק שמתחשב במצבם ההתחלתי של השחקנים ונועד לתקן את מצבם כך שהתוצאה תהיה שיוויונית. הוא מעלה מחשבות על המבנה החברתי, הכלכלי והפוליטי הישראלי או כפי שיהודה מלצר (עורך סידרת פילוסופיה בהוצאת ידיעות ספרים) התבטא באחד הראיונות איתו: "הדבר האחד שקל לזכור מכל תורתו הוא שהעולם מלא אי שוויון, וכל מה שביכולתנו ובחובתנו לעשות הוא לסדר את החוקים כך שכל אי שוויון יהיה מוצדק בתנאי שיביא לשיפור מצבם של הדפוקים ביותר. כלומר, ההפך הגמור ממה שאופייני בישראל: מישהו חזק - כל הכבוד, בוא נסדר שיהיה יותר חזק, ונסגוד לו." הספר לא פשוט לקריאה, קראתי אותו במשך שבועות, בעיקר בלב התיאוריה כשרולס מגיע לטיעונים על מסך הבערות או על עיקרון ההפרשים. אולם, גם אם התיאוריה לא מספקת פתרון כולל ויישים, וגם אם הקריאה וההבנה קשה, רולס מספק לקורא תובנות על צדק חברתי והצורה שבה הוא אמור להראות.
מומלץ לקריאה בתקווה שהספר והוצאתו תעורר דיון ציבורי ופוליטי נרחב בשאלת הצדק בחברה הישראלית והאופן שבו ניתן להגיע לאיזון בין חלקי החברה המתרחקים באופן עיקבי והרסני. "צדק כהוגנות - הצגה מחודשת", ג´ון רולס הוצאת ידיעות ספרים, 2010, 407 עמודים כולל ביוגרפיה מאת תומאס פוגי ואחרית דבר מאת יוסי דהאן.
* יש להבחין בין צודק ולא צודק ובין מוסרי ולא מוסרי. צדק לא בהכרח שווה מוסרי. באופן דומה לא כל מה שלא מוסרי הוא לא צודק. כלומר אין סימטריה ישירה בין המושגים. צדק הוא חלק מתיאוריה מוסרית.
אם כן, מהו צדק? האם לדוגמא הענישה של הפוגע בשחר גרינשפן, שאחותה, יעל גרינשפן, יצאה ועוררה גלים גבוהים ברשת ומחוצה לה, היתה באמת לא צודקת? (כן, היא היתה לא צודקת במובן שחומרת הענישה לא התאימה לחומרת הפגיעה וכך הגמול של הפוגע לא התאים למעשה) כיצד ניתן להתייחס לטענות של אי צדק חלוקתי שעלו במסגרת הרפורמה במיסוי תגליות הגז? (טענת ה"מ��יע לי" מתייחסת לאפשרות עשיית צדק במסגרת חלוקת המשאבים וההון לכלל הציבור ולא לקבוצה קטנה) וכיצד ניתן להשיג את הצדק במסגרת חברתית הוגנת?
אחד מהכשרים של בני אדם החיים בחברה, היא היכולת המוסרית לחוש צדק, להבין וליישם את עקרונותיו. צדק הוא מושג חמקמק וקשה להגדרה. הקושי בהגדרה מתגבר לנוכח העידן הפוסט מודרניסטי, הרואה בסובייקטיבי חזות הכל. אין אמת אחת, אין טוב אחד ומה שיכול להיתפס כצודק עבורי, יכול להיתפס כלא צודק עבור אחר. שאלת הצדק העסיקה דורות של הוגים מדיספלינות פילוסופיות וסוציולוגיות, שהבולט בינהם, זה שחולל מהפך חשיבתי והשפיע על תחומי חשיבה רבים במאה ה- 20, הוא ג´ון בורדלי רולס.
חיים ראויים "כיצד יכולתי להתפלל ולבקש מאלוהים שיעזור לי, או למשפחתי, או לארצי, או לכל דבר יקר אחר שהיה קרוב לליבי, בעוד שאלוהים לא היה נכון להושיע מיליונים של יהודים מידיו של היטלר?..." (38)
ג´ון בורדלי רולס נולד ב- 21 בפברואר 1921 בבולטימור, השני בחמשת בניהם של וויליאם לי ואנה אבל רולס. רולס גדל במשפחה מבוססת בה שני הוריו גילו עיניין רב בפוליטיקה והיו פעילים פוליטיים בארה"ב של שנות ה- 40. ג´ון היה קרוב במיוחד לאימו שהנחילה לו את תחושת הצדק בפעילותה למען זכויות נשים. בהשפעתה הוא החל בצעירותו להרהר הירהורים בשאלות של גזע ומעמד. בעיקר חוויותיו מהילדות עוררו אצלו תחושת אי צדק באשר לאפרו אמריקאים ולהזדמנויות של הלבנים העניים להתפתח ולרכוש חינוך טוב. בשנת 1939 החל את לימודיו בפרינסטון והושפע מאד מאחד המורים הראשונים שלו נורמן מאלקולם. בסמסטר אביב של 1942 לקח רולס קורס נוסף עם מאלקולם שעסק בנושא הרוע האנושי. הקורס הצית אצלו עיניין רדום שהיה לו בדת והוביל אותו לכתיבת התזה שלו בנושא. בינואר 1943 סיים רולס את לימודי ה- BAשלו בפילוסופיה בהצטיינות והתגייס לצבא. במהלך שירותו התנסויותיו במלחמה נטלו ממנו את אמונתו בנצרות האורתודוכסית.
במאמר קצר שפורסם במלואו רק בשנת 2009, הוא כותב: "כדי לפרש את ההיסטוריה כמבטאת את רצון האלוהים, על רצון האלוהים להיות הולם את מושגי הצדק הבסיסיים ביותר כפי שאלה מוכרים לנו. הרי מה עוד יכול הצדק הבסיסי ביותר להיות?..."(39)
ב- 1946 חזר לפרינסון ובמהלך שנת 50 סיים לכתוב את עבודת הדוקטורט שלו. בעשור שבין 1962 – 1971 השלים רולס את עבודתו הגדולה והמהפכנית "A Theory of Justice". שנות השישים נחשבות לשנים סוערות מבחינה פוליטית בארה"ב. שנות ה- 60 המאוחרות עמדו בסימן מלחמת ויאטנם, מלחמה שרולס האמין שאינה צודקת. שנים אלה הותירו רישומן בתיאוריה שלו שנכתבה באותה התקופה. אי אפשר להפריז בחשיבות הגותו של רולס. "A Theory of Justice" חולל מהפך בדיון הפילוסופי פוליטי. גם לאחר פירסום התיאוריה המשיך רולס בעבודתו הפוריה ובמשך למעלה מ-50 שנות פעילותו, הוא יצר תיאוריה פוליטית מקיפה שהשפיעה לא רק על התחום הפילוסופי פוליטי אלא גם על תחומים נוספים: משפטים, מדעי המדינה וכלכלה. תיאוריה של צדק תורגמה ל- 27 שפות ונמכרה במאות אלפי עותקים.
אלפי מאמרי בעד ונגד נכתבו על התיאוריה ומרכזיותה באה לידי ביטוי באמירתו של נוזיק (מתנגדו הגדול של רולס): "קשה למצוא בתקופה זו טקסט פוליטי תיאורטי העוסק בשאלות של צדק, שאינו מתייחס לתיאוריית הצדק של רולס" (מתוך אחרית הדבר , עמ´ 363). "צדק כהוגנות", הוא ניסיון לניסוח מחדש, ניסוח מדוייק של רעיונותיו לאור השינויים הרבים שעברה התיאוריה מאז פירסומה ב- 1971. זוהי התיאוריה מעודכנת והמותאמת לשינויים הפוליטיים והיא מתמודדת עם רוח הזמן תוך שהיא מהוות גם מענה למתנגדיו ולמבקריו.
ניסוי מחשבתי "דבר שגור הוא בפילוסופיה המוסרית, לדרוש שעקרונות ראשוניים יהיו כלליים ואוניברסליים. עקרונות הם כלליים כאשר ניתן לנסחם ללא שימוש בשמות פרטיים או בתיאורים מיידעים מוסווים. הם אוניברסליים כאשר ניתן להחילם על כל אחד מנשאי המוסר, ובמקרה שלנו על כל אחד מן האזרחים בחברה שבה מדובר, בלי שהדבר יהיה כרוך בחוסר עקביות או בחוסר לכידות המביס את עצמו." (191)
בני אדם נולדים לתוך חברה שכבר מוסדרת על ידי עקרונות צדק כאלה ואחרים. מתי, כיצד ואיך התקבלו אותם עקרונות? לשם כך מאמץ רולס את המצב המקורי בו אנשים נמצאים מאחורי "מסך בערות" היפותטי וא-היסטורי. "מסך הבערות" מאפשר לרולס לבחון את ההתנהגות החברתית והפוליטית של האנשים כשהם טבולה רסה, נקיים מדעות קדומות על גזע, השתייכות, מין, נסיבות ומקרים מיוחדים. חמושים ברציונליות ובהיותם חופשיים ושווים כשיוסר "סמך הבערות" נגלה, מנימוקים שונים, כי אותם אנשים בחרו ב"צדק כהוגנות" כעקרונות צדק המסדירים את הפעילות החברתית. בכלל זה, יאמצו האנשים מאחורי מסך הבערות את "עיקרון ההפרשים" כעיקרון צדק על פיו יחולקו הטובין (על כלל משמעויותיהם הנגזרות כולל חרויות, כבוד, עושר, קניין, זכויות ועוד) בחברה כך שהפערים אם קיימים יתרמו באופן אפקטיבי ביותר לתועלתם של הנחשלים ביותר ללא קשר לפערים בהכנסה וברווחים. רוצה לאמר, בתנאים שבהם למשתתפים החברתיים אין מושג קלוש לגבי העולם החיצוני ותנאיו, היותנו רציונליים (מחשבים חישובים של רווח והפסד), חוש הצדק החברתי והרצון לשמר את האיזון כך שלא יופר במערכת, יוביל אותנו לפעול כך שהנשכרים ביותר יהיו הנחשלים ביותר חברתית.
צדק "בתולדות המחשבה הדמוקרטית ניתן מקום בולט לשני רעיונות נוגדים של החברה: האחד הוא רעיון החברה כמערכת הוגנת של שיתוף פעולה חברתי בין אזרחים הנחשבים לחופשיים ושווים; האחר הוא רעיון החברה כמערכת חברתית המאורגנת כך שתפיק את מרב האושר, המחושב כסכום תועלותיהם של כל בני החברה, כאשר אותו האושר הוא אושר מלא, המאופיין ע"י דוקטרינה מקפת..." (205)
בלב המוטיבציה של התיאוריה הרולסיאנית, צדק כהוגנות, עומדת ההתמודדות עם התועלתנות כתפיסה פוליטית חלופית הגורסת כי כלל המעשים של המדינה ואזרחיה מכוונים להגדלת התועלת הכללית. במשך מאות של הגות פוליטית נעשו ניסיונות להצדיק את קיום המדינה, את סמכותה ואת חובתם של האזרחים לציית לכפייה של חוקיה. תיאוריות פילוסופיות פוליטיות שעוסקות בהסכמה של בני האדם לקבל על עצמם את מרות מוסדות השילטון, מכונות תיאוריות אמנה חברתית. בין ההוגים שגיבשו תיאוריות אמנה, ניתן למנות את הובס, רוסו וג´ון לוק. בשלב הראשון, רולס עוסק בחברה הדמוקרטית על מוסדותיה הפוליטיים והחברתיים, שכן לטענתו רק בחברה כזו יכולים להתקיים תנאים של צדק חברתי. אם כן, הצדק בחברה עומד על שני עקרונות : על העיקרון כי לכל אדם הזכות הבלתי ניתנת לעירעור לתבוע חירויות יסוד שוות המתיישבות עם מערכת שלמה של חירויות לכל האחרים. הצדק הרולסיאני נשען על זכות מוקנית לקשת רחבה של חירויות המבטיחות הפעלתם של שני כשרים מוסריים: הכושר לחוש צדק, כלומר היכולת להבין וליישם את עקרונות הצדק הפוליטי. והיכולת לתפוס טוב, לתקן את התפיסה ולקדם אותה באורח רציונלי. ועל העיקרון כי פערים חברתיים וכלכליים ניתנים להצדקה בשני תנאים: בתנאי של שיוויון הזדמנויות הוגן ובתנאי שבו אי שוויון כלכלי וחברתי יפעל לטובת בני החברה שהם "הנחשלים ביותר" (מכונה גם עיקרון הפער) תפקידה של החברה לתקן פגמים שנופלים בשוויון הזדמנויות פורמלי. קרי על מנת שהחברה תהיה צודקת לא רק שיש לאפשר שוויון הזדמנויות אלא ש��כול החברים בקבוצה יהיה סיכוי הוגן להשיגם תוך כדי כך שהחברה חייבת להנהיג הזדמנויות חינוך שוות לכולם. בהציבו את העיקרון הראשון בקדימות על פני השני, רולס שולל פעולות המרה בין זכויות וחירויות המוקנות ע"י העיקרון הראשון לבין תועלות חברתיות וכלכליות. כך שחברה צודקת אליבא רולס, מחוייבת בנקיטת צעדים אופרטיביים ולא רק רעיוניים או עיוניים. או במילים אחרות על הצדק להיעשות ולהראות. כל זה טוב ויפה, אולם, כשאני מביטה סביבי אני בספק אם העקרונות הרולסיאנים פועלים במציאות הקיימת או איי פעם התקיימו והאם קיימת חברה שבה אפשרי לפעול במסגרת הנחות אלו?
מדינה "...במדינה דמוקרטית מודרנית החירויות השוות הן, הלכה למעשה, פורמליות בלבד? אף שנדמה - כך ממשיכה הביקורת- כי זכויות וחירויות היסוד של האזרחים שוות באופן תקף, שהרי לכולם הזכות להצביע, הזכות להתמודד על משרות פוליטיות ולהשתתף בפוליטיקה המפלגתית, וכן הלאה, הנה הפערים החברתיים והכלכליים במוסדות הרקע הם בדרך כלל כה גדולים , כך שהעשירים יותר ובעלי המעמד הגבוה שולטים בדרך כלל בחיים הפוליטיים, ומחוקקים חוקים וקווי מדיניות חברתיים המקדמים את האינטרסים האישיים שלהם" (282 - 283)
לאחר שגיבש את תפיסת הצדק פועל רולס לדיון בהרחבה בשאלות של נאותות הצדק במשטרים השונים. רולס מציג חמישה סוגי משטרים : קפיטליזם נוסח לז אפייר (Laissez - fair), שמוכר לנו כקפיטליזם חזירי, הדוגל באי התערבות של המדינה (או מדוייק יותר אי התערבות של המדינה כשהדברים נוגעים לאזרח הקטן). רולס טוען שהסדריו הבסיסיים של משטר זה מבטיחים שיוויון פורמלי בלבד כי הם מתבססים על ערכים כמו יעילות וצמיחה כלכלית שמבטיחות מינימום הכרחי בלבד. מדינת רווחה קפיטליסטית . גם במקרה זה רולס טוען שההסדרים של משטר זה גם לא מקדמים את עקרונות הצדק של "צדק כהוגנות" כי הוא מתיר פערים נרחבים מאוד בבעלות על קיניין וכך השליטה בכלכלה ובחלק מהחיים הפוליטיים נותרת בידים מצומצמות. כתוצאה מכך במצב של פערים חברתיים וכלכליים גדולים, עלול להתפתח במשטר מסוג זה תת מעמד מיואש ומדוכא הנסמך על העברות רווחה ובכך מעמד שלם לא משתתף בחיים הפוליטיים. סוציאליזם. נשלל בשל ריכוזיות השליטה בכלכלה והפוליטיקה. למעשה רק שני משטרים מבטיחים מימוש של הערך ההוגן של חירויות פוליטיות ומבטיחות שיוויון הזדמנויות הוגן: דמוקרטיה של בעליי יניין ומשטר ליברלי סוציאליסטי. ההבדל בינהם נעוץ בכך שבדמוקרטיה של בעלי קיניין, המוסדות החברתיים והפוליטיים פועלים כדי לבזר את הבעלות על הרכוש וההון ובכך למנוע מחלק קטן בחברה להשתלט על הכלכלה, ובעקיפין גם על החיים הפוליטיים. נראה לכם כמו משהו שנדרש במדינה שלנו בדחיפות? רולס מציע הסדרים כמו מימון ציבורי לבחירות והגבלות על תרומות לתעמולת בחירות, הבטחת יתר שיוויון בגישה לכלי התקשורת הציבוריים ותקנות מסויימות בנוגע לחופש הדיבור והעיתונות. רולס מודע להתנגשות בין חירויות היסוד אולם חירויות אלה אינן מוחלטות מהחירויות הפוליטיות ולערובה לערכן ההוגן.
סיום "בחברה מוסדרת היטב, תפיסת הצדק הציבורית מספקת איפוא נקודת מבט מוכרת באופן הדדי, שממנה האזרחים יכולים להפנות את תביעותיהם לנאותות ��וליטית כלפי מוסדותיהם הפוליטיים, או אף להכריע בין תביעותיהם השונות..." (81)
במשך השנים מאז פירסומה של התיאוריה, בשנת 1971, נכתבו תילי תילים של מסמכים ופרשנויות על התיאוריה. ביקורות רבות ניתכו על התיאוריה הרולסיאנית ובמהלך הספר רולס מתייחס אליהן, תוך תיקון התיאוריה וכיוונונה. ניתן לקרוא על הביקורות לתיאוריה של רולס וה��יאוריות המתחרות שצמחו לה במסמך שנמצא בקישור הזה – http://politics.huji.ac.il/shlomisega... למרות הביקורות, כבודה של התיאוריה מונח במקומה בהעלאת שאלות וסוגיות של שיוויון, אחריות וגמול ראויים בחברה. לא מדובר בצדק שיוויוני, אלא בצדק שמתחשב במצבם ההתחלתי של השחקנים ונועד לתקן את מצבם כך שהתוצאה תהיה שיוויונית. הוא מעלה מחשבות על המבנה החברתי, הכלכלי והפוליטי הישראלי או כפי שיהודה מלצר (עורך סידרת פילוסופיה בהוצאת ידיעות ספרים) התבטא באחד הראיונות איתו: "הדבר האחד שקל לזכור מכל תורתו הוא שהעולם מלא אי שוויון, וכל מה שביכולתנו ובחובתנו לעשות הוא לסדר את החוקים כך שכל אי שוויון יהיה מוצדק בתנאי שיביא לשיפור מצבם של הדפוקים ביותר. כלומר, ההפך הגמור ממה שאופייני בישראל: מישהו חזק - כל הכבוד, בוא נסדר שיהיה יותר חזק, ונסגוד לו." הספר לא פשוט לקריאה, קראתי אותו במשך שבועות, בעיקר בלב התיאוריה כשרולס מגיע לטיעונים על מסך הבערות או על עיקרון ההפרשים. אולם, גם אם התיאוריה לא מספקת פתרון כולל ויישים, וגם אם הקריאה וההבנה קשה, רולס מספק לקורא תובנות על צדק חברתי והצורה שבה הוא אמור להראות.
מומלץ לקריאה בתקווה שהספר והוצאתו תעורר דיון ציבורי ופוליטי נרחב בשאלת הצדק בחברה הישראלית והאופן שבו ניתן להגיע לאיזון בין חלקי החברה המתרחקים באופן עיקבי והרסני. "צדק כהוגנות - הצגה מחודשת", ג´ון רולס הוצאת ידיעות ספרים, 2010, 407 עמודים כולל ביוגרפיה מאת תומאס פוגי ואחרית דבר מאת יוסי דהאן.
* יש להבחין בין צודק ולא צודק ובין מוסרי ולא מוסרי. צדק לא בהכרח שווה מוסרי. באופן דומה לא כל מה שלא מוסרי הוא לא צודק. כלומר אין סימטריה ישירה בין המושגים. צדק הוא חלק מתיאוריה מוסרית.
October 8, 2021
A great take on how to organize society to achieve the most equitable distribution of resources and power. Helped me form my view on the possibilities of forming a just society. Rambles at times, but he tries. Does not need to be 560 pages. Could have been 300, but A for effort.
July 2, 2019
In this incredible work of moral and political philosophy, Rawls sets out to develop an answer to the fundamental question of what we owe to each other. It is divided into three parts. The first deals with the actual theory itself, the second with the institutions that best embody the principles of justice and the third synthesizes the theory with a doctrine of the good and moral development.
The work can be a bit dense from time to time - perhaps this is because I’m too young or foolish to understand - but as far as I can tell it is a philosophically beautiful attempt to identify justice as fairness. An idea which he rigorously defines, explores and elaborates but somehow is able to match our intuitive convictions. Even though it is such a profound and complex work, Rawls is unassuming and modest, for example:
“It is too much to suppose that there exists for all or even most moral problems a reasonable solution. Perhaps only a few can satisfactorily be answered.”
A work to take one’s time with, A Theory of Justice has understandably etched itself deeply into the consciousness of so many contemporary philosophers.
The work can be a bit dense from time to time - perhaps this is because I’m too young or foolish to understand - but as far as I can tell it is a philosophically beautiful attempt to identify justice as fairness. An idea which he rigorously defines, explores and elaborates but somehow is able to match our intuitive convictions. Even though it is such a profound and complex work, Rawls is unassuming and modest, for example:
“It is too much to suppose that there exists for all or even most moral problems a reasonable solution. Perhaps only a few can satisfactorily be answered.”
A work to take one’s time with, A Theory of Justice has understandably etched itself deeply into the consciousness of so many contemporary philosophers.
February 4, 2008
On page 432 of this hefty work, Rawls writes:
"Imagine someone whose only pleasure is to count blades of grass in various geometrically shaped areas such as park squares and well-trimmed lawns. He is otherwise intelligent and actually possesses unusual skills, since he manages to survive by solving difficult mathematical problems for a fee. The definition of the good forces us to admit that the good for this man is indeed counting blades of grass, or more accurately, his good is determined by a plan that gives an especially prominent place to this activity..."
So much for a 'thin-conception' of the good.
"Imagine someone whose only pleasure is to count blades of grass in various geometrically shaped areas such as park squares and well-trimmed lawns. He is otherwise intelligent and actually possesses unusual skills, since he manages to survive by solving difficult mathematical problems for a fee. The definition of the good forces us to admit that the good for this man is indeed counting blades of grass, or more accurately, his good is determined by a plan that gives an especially prominent place to this activity..."
So much for a 'thin-conception' of the good.
August 13, 2007
And they say that America, like Rome, has no indigenous philosophy!
Oddly, this is considered a classic, even though Rawls doesn't really answer any of his own questions, but uses a handy thought experiment to avoid doing so. That said, I feel like he establishes a better basis for government than any of the European competition. That's amazing, but this book is still ponderous and boring as shit.
Oddly, this is considered a classic, even though Rawls doesn't really answer any of his own questions, but uses a handy thought experiment to avoid doing so. That said, I feel like he establishes a better basis for government than any of the European competition. That's amazing, but this book is still ponderous and boring as shit.
May 13, 2011
What is justice? Plato addressed this question in his epic work "The Republic." John Rawls explores this question more recently. His is acclaimed as a major work on the subject. It has produced considerable debate in philosophical circles. He uses the metaphor af a "veil of ignorance" as his starting point in exploration. An important essay on the subject of justice. . . .
January 26, 2016
It's crazy what you can make out of rationalism. Read the first chapter in order to get a rough summary of what in principle the theory consists in. It's a very impressive book that picks up some substantive argumentations further down the road, but still it's not quite my cup of tea.
June 20, 2019
یکی از مهمترین آ��ار فلسفه سیاسی معاصر با نظمی هندسی و وسعتی در جزییات که آدم را یاد کار های کانت می اندازد.اگر به فلسفه سیاسی علاقه مندید قطعا یکی از کتاب های مرجع و اصلی خواهد بود.
October 19, 2016
Why You Should Actually Read A Theory of Justice
In meticulous detail, Rawls indicates that these “egoistic conceptions” should not be considered as alternatives, because people in the original position are “rational and mutually disinterested” (12).
Peirce's claim seems an appropriate rebuttal to any consideration of an actual egoistic conception of justice. (And can we be realistic at this point? I mean, honestly, isn't Libertarianism really just an "egoistic conception" with a fancy title? If I was a baseball player and the picture balked allowing me to go to first base; then, balked twice more, and I ended up on third base, surely I wouldn't claim I hit a triple...)
In other words, whatever the distribution pattern may be, a person’s ability to engage in free actions has the ability to undermine that pattern.
If pressed for the most simplistic one-sentence answer to how I viewed my understanding of this work I would not hesitate to exclaim, “The most conclusive qualitative argument for ‘justice as fairness’”. Notwithstanding, this simplistic exclamation needs to be supported in a way that encourages others, who are inclined, to relish the challenge of critical discourse on the imperative questions of political philosophy raised by John Rawls.
As part of my remarks, I would like to make some preliminary comments about choosing to give this review a title and italicizing the word “actually”. As I read the other reviews, I noticed two main issues concerning A Theory of Justice. First, there a many people who tend to turn their review into an argument against Rawls' and his principles. The interesting aspect of these various arguments is that they have all been covered before by either Rawls, if one cares to actually read A Theory of Justice in its entirety, or by other political philosophers in response to Rawls.
Although I will not attempt to make a complete list of all the arguments, nor will I attempt to name the multitude of writers that have argued against Rawls, I will name Ronald Dworkin and his essay, “The Original Position;” and Robert Nozick, and his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, as exemplars to cover most of the proposed arguments against Rawls.
Starting with Dworkin’s objection it is that even if the constraints placed on those in the original position, such as the “veil of ignorance,” worked, is that enough to assume that people would come to an agreement? More importantly, would they come to an agreement and choose Rawls' principles of justice? (Dworkin 500). The simple and unsophisticated answer is “yes,” but only if the characteristics described by Rawls were actually the ones that divide people on issues of justice. Nevertheless, I am confident that Rawls would scold my simple answer, and tell me I am not even close to recognizing all the intricacies inherent to the peculiar psychological construct of the human psyche.
Nevertheless, Rawls understands objections, like Dworkin's, and gives a “presentation of alternatives” in §21 of A Theory of Justice (Rawls 107). Specifically, Rawls clarifies that arguments about self-interest are “Egoistic Conceptions” (107). Under the classification of “Egoistic Conceptions,” models of justice would have the following principles:
1. First-person dictatorship: Everyone is to serve my interests.
2. Free-rider: Everyone is to act justly except for myself if I choose not to.
3. General: Everyone is permitted to advance his interests as he pleases (107).
In meticulous detail, Rawls indicates that these “egoistic conceptions” should not be considered as alternatives, because people in the original position are “rational and mutually disinterested” (12).
Maybe the simple words of Charles Sanders Peirce from "The Fixation of Belief" can help add support to Rawls assertion:
“Take, for example, the doctrine that man only acts selfishly – that is, from the consideration that acting in one way will afford him more pleasure than acting in another. This rests on no fact in the world, but it has had a wide acceptance as being the only reasonable theory.” (1058).
Peirce's claim seems an appropriate rebuttal to any consideration of an actual egoistic conception of justice. (And can we be realistic at this point? I mean, honestly, isn't Libertarianism really just an "egoistic conception" with a fancy title? If I was a baseball player and the picture balked allowing me to go to first base; then, balked twice more, and I ended up on third base, surely I wouldn't claim I hit a triple...)
Further, Rawls also introduces five formal constraints to test the possibility that his two principles of justice would be chosen from a suitable list of “conceptions of justice” (Rawls 107). The suitable list of “conceptions of justice” that Rawls has in mind is as follows:
A. The Two Principles of Justice (in serial order)
1. The principle of greatest equal liberty
2. (a) The principle of (fair) equality of opportunity
(b) The difference principle
B. Mixed Conceptions. Substitute one for A2 above
1. The principle of average utility; or
2. The principle of average utility, subject to a constraint, either:
(a) That a certain social minimum be maintained, or
(b) That the overall distribution not be too wide; or
3. The principle of average utility subject to either constraint in B2 plus that of equality of fair opportunity
C. Classical Teleological Conceptions
1. The classical principle of utility
2. The average principle of utility
3. The principle of perfection
D. Intuitionistic Conceptions
1. To balance total utility against the principle of equal distribution
2. To balance average utility against the principle of redress
3. To balance a list of prima facie principles (as appropriate) (107). I have left out “Egoistic Conceptions” as Rawls notes that these are not, “strictly speaking,” alternatives.
Rawls indicates that this list of conceptions of justice can be tested by using five “formal constraints of the concept of right” (112). In explaining the passage, I will not endeavor to explain each constraint in detail. However, the preliminary presentation of the constraints should impose no restriction on the ability to sense the basic concept of the restraints.
1. The “principles should be general” (113).
2. The principles must be universally applicable (114).
3. The principles must have “publicity” (115).
4. The principles must “impose an [adjudicative] ordering on conflicting claims” (115).
5. The principles must have “finality” (116).
When the list of conceptions is compared against the five formal constraints, Rawls indicates that his principles of justice are the only ones that meet the criterion imposed by the “formal constraints of the concept of right” (112).
For succinctness, Rawls concludes that when you take into consideration all of the “conceptions of right,” elaborated previously, the “formal constraints” provide a system which correctly filters out the problematic nature of common moral theories. Consequently, Rawls’ two principles of justice are the only principles that can survive after being put to the test imposed by the formal constraints (117).
There is an important distinction to make here between the definitions of self-interest and that of mutually disinterested. Self-interest is defined as “concern only for getting what you need and not about what happens to other people” or, “your own interest or advantage”. Conversely, mutually disinterested is defined as, “not taking an interest in one another’s interests” (Rawls 12). The distinction here is that self-interest is a recognition that comes only through a judgment towards another person. It is a foundational belief of egoistic philosophies that self-interest is what people are concerned with in their formulations of ethical beliefs. On the other hand, a mutually disinterested person has no interest in another person’s interests.
This is an excellent way to establish any conception of justice, because when comparisons are made from self-interest, it is inevitable that envy creeps in and negates the fairness that could be obtained within a conception of mutual disinterest. Hence, the only way to concur on specific principles of justice would be through parties that are mutually disinterested. This avoids the sidle of envy intrinsic to self-interest. Contrariwise, people do have different conceptions of what makes their life worth living. There are indeed different beliefs in areas such as philosophy, politics, and morality. Nonetheless, Rawls vindicates his principles because, in order to categorically understand justice as fairness, the people in the original position must operate under “the veil of ignorance,” if any real principles of justice are to be obtained (Rawls 118).
To clarify the importance of the original position, let us turn now to an explanation of Rawls’ first principle of justice. This principle, generally represented as the “Liberty Principle,” specifies that “[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others” (Rawls 53). Nota Bene, This is the initial formulation of the “Liberty Principle”. The complete formulation of the first principle comes in §46 of A Theory of Justice, where it is stated as, “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.” For the purpose of this review, the basic formulation, as presented, makes it easier to explain the concept without over-explaining other key terms in the first principle.
Rawls advises that if people would choose a different principle to regulate liberty, such as from a position of self-interest, then the result would be discrimination against some people viz., those who are not like oneself. The subsequent situation would then be an approval of a reduced liberty for everyone. Therefore, by using the veil of ignorance, and justifying that the people in the original position are “rational and mutually disinterested,” Rawls is able to answer the objection of self-interest (12). The original position reveals that no “rational and mutually disinterested” person would ever agree with discrimination, or potential loss of liberty, if his or her own particular social position, psychological motive, etc. were unknown (Rawls 12).
Now, the argument from Nozick is a little more complex. Although a thorough exposition and a counter-critique of Nozick’s treatment of Rawls’ theory is beyond the scope of this review, there are some intriguing points to consider.
Like Rawls, Nozick explores various theories of justice and classifies them as either historical, or patterned, and un-patterned. Nozick admits that “Political philosophers now must either work within Rawls’ theory or explain why not” (Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia 183).
The first argument Nozick presents, against Rawls, begins by envisioning a State that is regulated by whatever pattern has been chosen. As an example, Nozick uses “the principle of distribution according to moral merit” (Nozick 156). This supposition requires a variation of total distributive shares centered on moral merit. Nonetheless, the principle could easily be changed to the principle of distribution “…according to usefulness to society” (Nozick 156). Either way, the point is that a principle of distribution is patterned “if it specifies that a distribution is to vary along with some natural dimension, weighted sum of natural dimension, or lexicographic ordering of natural dimension” (Nozick 156). Perhaps the most famous of this type of patterning principle is the Marxist declaration “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program 465). Nozick explains that this type of patterning of principles undermines the task of a theory of distributive justice. If the task of distributive justice is “to fill in the blank in ‘each according to his _______’ is to be predisposed to search for a pattern” (Nozick 159-160).
Nozick considered these types of patterned principles to present a real problem for Rawls’ principles of justice. Nozick questions if it is possible to be in favor of patterned theories of distribution, like that of Marx, and at the same time, be in favor of liberty. Of course, Nozick thinks that these beliefs are inconsistent with each other. If, in a society, money is given in proportion to a person’s needs, then the more somebody needs the money, the more money a person should have. This type of distributive scheme can be labeled D1 (Nozick 160).
In contrast, suppose that Stephen Curry is the most highly sought after basketball player among teams in the NBA. Further, assume that after this season, he becomes an unrestricted free agent. While negotiating a contract with an NBA team the following clause is added to his contract: For home games, fifty dollars are added to the price of a ticket. Throughout the season, the fans are thrilled to watch him play. Moreover, they have no problem paying the extra fifty dollars to see him play. At the end of the season, Curry ends up with roughly 35 million dollars.2 This is a much larger amount than anyone else is paid and far larger than the average income of an NBA player. Is Curry entitled to this income? Is this new distribution, we will call it D2, unjust? (Nozick 161). This example allows Nozick to make several important conclusions on patterned theories.
First, any pattern, whatever it may be, is prone to interference by a person’s ability to make a free choice. In the example of Stephen Curry, the distribution pattern, D1, was disrupted by distribution D2, because fans were willing to pay the extra fifty dollars to watch Curry play. The conclusion for Nozick is:
Any favored pattern would be transformed into one unfavored by the principle, by people choosing to act in various ways; for example, by people exchanging goods and services with other people, or giving things to other people, things the transferrers are entitled to under the favored distributional pattern. To maintain a pattern one must either continually interfere to stop people from transferring resources as they wish to, or continually (or periodically) interfere to take from some people resources that others for some reason chose to transfer to them. (163).
In other words, whatever the distribution pattern may be, a person’s ability to engage in free actions has the ability to undermine that pattern.
The immediate counter to Nozick’s argument is to ask, “what if people in the society stick to the pattern?” It seems that this is not a far-fetched counter. An argument can easily be made that most people in a society do stick to patterns within a slight variable range. However, the most accurate counter to Nozick’s argument comes from Rawls’ himself when he explains:
The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into a society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action (The bolding of this sentence is mine and not John Rawls. I highlighted this sentence because it provides a direct refutation to Nozick’s understanding of patterns). In justice as fairness men agree to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit. The two principles are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune; and while no doubt imperfect in other ways, the institutions which satisfy these principles are just. (Rawls 87-88).
Consequently, it seems that Rawls already presupposed, and answered, Nozick’s objections to problems of patterning.
The exposition of the counter-arguments from both Dworkin and Nozick suggest that either they have failed to read Rawls' A Theory of Justice, or that they have misinterpreted some of his explanations. Essentially, the counter-arguments presented here are not really objections. Rather, they are failures to appreciate the possible correct interpretation of Rawls.
Consequently, this brings to fruition the second main issue concerning this work... Did you actually read the book? In the reviews, there are people who actually admit that they did not read the whole book. In addition, it is obvious from some of the other reviews that people did not read the whole book. How can you possibly recommend or not recommend a book you did not read?
Let me add further to this argument in three ways. First, if you read the original edition of A Theory of Justice, then appropriately you should review that. However, these are reviews for the revised edition. Although to some this might seem trivial, it is actually of vital importance. The usual arguments made against Rawls were in response to the original edition (Nozick, Dworkin, et al). After those arguments, Rawls revised some of the writing to answer these arguments. In fact, if you look at the back of the revised edition, you will notice a conversion table; three pages worth! This would mean that you have to actually read the book to understand this.
Second, and a simple argument, if you read a “part” of Rawls’ work in a compilation, anthology, etc. Then, you did not read A Theory of Justice.
Lastly, here is a practical test. Go to bookstores and find a used edition (not the library, nobody marks up library books; at least they shouldn't!) of this book. Look through the book and tell me what you notice. If anyone has studied Rawls, you will see the first section marked, highlighted, pages were worn, etc. However, you will notice the second and third section unmarked. In fact, they have probably never been looked at! I have done this test for the last two years and I have yet to find one used copy of the book with any markings after the first section. Therefore, how can one claim to read a book that they have not read?
This is my last argument for why you should “actually” read this book. The first part presents only the essentials for the structure of Rawls’ theory, and the principles of justice are argued only on the basis of reasonable stipulations concerning the choices. The second part then examines the sort of institutions that justice enjoins and the obligations and duties that those institutions would impose on the people. Finally, in the third part, you will find a “check” on whether or not “justice as fairness” is a feasible conception.
Ultimately, by reading the book in its entirety, you can then make reviews like this one and instead of asking people, “did you read Rawls?” You can then add a second question: “No seriously, did you actually read A Theory of Justice?
February 28, 2022
Before reading this, I was aware of Rawls' very influential idea of the Veil of Ignorance - morally, we should choose outcomes that we would have rationally agreed to if we could have discussed the matter before finding out which person each of us would actually be in the situation. He calls the hypothetical scenario where we agree to rules the Original Position. (He doesn't capitalize things like Veil of Ignorance and Original Position, but I do.) Before I started the book, I was thinking of examples like deciding whether to return a missing wallet. Presumably most people would agree agree that a lost wallet should be returned if they were equally likely to lose their wallet or find someone else's, so that is the correct action in real life as well.
Rawls' idea is actually pretty different, though. First, he's not using the Veil of Ignorance to determine what should happen in a specific situation, but rather what rules should govern the basic structure of society. For example, the people in what he calls the Original Position could decide between capitalism or socialism. More strangely, he says the parties do not know basic facts about themselves, like their religious beliefs, their attitudes towards risk, or their "conception of the good". At this point, I thought he had assumed away any sense of right and wrong, so I wasn't sure how people would make these decisions. However, he's using "good" in a different way. He uses the word "right" to refer to morally correct actions (i.e. "the right thing to do"). By contrast, something is "good" for a person if it would be rational for them to want it given their goals and desires. So basically he's assuming people don't know what their goals and desires in life will be, which is more reasonable. Not knowing an attitude towards risk is a bit more weird, since I think there are rational constraints on attitudes towards risk. Rawls does assume the parties are fully rational, so I'm not sure if he disagrees with me on this point, or if he means parties don't know what attitude towards risk they will have within the constraints of rationality.
I have one big complaint about Rawls' framing of the Original Position. Whenever making some decision, he suggest we make it based on the hypothetical Original Position where everyone meets who is currently alive. As Rawls points out, this means that if utilitarianism were chosen, it would almost certainly be average utilitarianism. I probably believe in some kind of total utilitarianism, and I think it's a big mistake not to give future and potential people a voice at the table, although doing so would certainly make it harder to think about.
Leaving this complication aside, I do find the Veil of Ignorance a helpful tool for thinking about moral problems, but I'm skeptical about how often it actually changes my mind on something. It's hard to tell when I'm being subconsciously influenced by my own interests, so it's easy to claim that whatever moral positions I hold would be the same under the Veil of Ignorance.
On to concrete positions. Rawls argues that in the Original Position, people would choose two principles. First, they would want society to grant each person as much liberty as is consistent with everyone having that amount. This first rule is lexically prior. Subject to it being satisfied, government should be staffed by positions that are equally open to all. Also, Primary Goods should be distributed according to the Difference Principle. Rawls defines Primary Goods as the things people want regardless of what else they want. His two main examples are money and self-esteem, although I find money a lot easier to think about when setting policy, since it can actually be redistributed. The Difference Principle says to maximize the primary goods of those who have the least - in other words, it's maximin. Rawls doesn't like the term "maximin" since it brings up connotations of risk aversion, which he doesn't think apply to conversations about society-wide redistribution rather than an individuals approach to uncertainty.
Now, I honestly had a bit of a hard time giving these rules a chance, because they sound downright ridiculous. First off, you can't have one rule be lexically prior to another, or the second rule never gets used. Here, how can you redistribute Primary Goods without infringing on someone's liberty? Also, the Difference Principle is clearly absurd. How are those who are the worst off the only ones in consideration? There's a reason maximin connotes extreme risk aversion, and wouldn't choosing the Difference Principle from the Original Position also imply extreme risk aversion? I wouldn't call it rational at all?
Rawls didn't convince me, but he put up much better arguments than I would have predicted. First, I got the impression he's not really arguing that these two principles would be morally optimal, but just that they are a practical solution to a number of problems in the way of cooperation. For example, the use of Primary Goods is to get around a major problem with utilitarianism as a definer of policy - in practice, it is all but impossible to compare different people's utility functions. Primary Goods, on the other hand, can be easily compared. (At least, money can. I dunno how Rawls proposes to measure self respect, and he didn't really discuss that.) However, once you've switched to using Primary Goods instead of utility, you can't maximize the expectation. Pretty much any utilitarian would agree that people have declining marginal utility of money, so maximizing expected money in the world would be absurd. Perhaps choosing policies that maximize the wealth of the poorest individuals would be the most reasonable.
For my objection about lexical rules, Rawls thinks this is not as much of a problem for his two principles. He agrees that if utilitarianism is your first principle, you basically can't have a second because it would never gets used. He thinks there could be many different sets of policies that maximize individual liberty, though. Honestly, I didn't really understand how he defines liberty. In any but obvious scenarios, I can't really predict what policy Rawls would support. Are mask mandates a violation of liberty, or do they actually increase everyone's liberty by improving their ability to do things without catching a disease? I think when to impose mask mandates is a tricky question, and saying that your goal is to maximize liberty doesn't really shed much light on the question.
Also, even if the rule about liberty does have ties where the second principle can be used, I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that some values are lexically prior to others. Rawls explicitly says the first principle is prior to the second because no amount of economic gain can justify any loss of liberty, and I don't agree with that at all. He didn't really argue for it though.
Another point Rawls made about the Difference Principle is that no one can claim they are being treated unjustly. By definition, everyone will have at least as much as they would in the scenario where Primary Goods are distributed equally. The people who have more have done nothing morally to deserve it (Rawls claims), but rather it is because of some talents they were born with or better opportunities they were given. Similarly, Rawls thinks people need to agree in the Original Position to policies they will continue to support no matter their position in life, and he asks how could one of the worst off people in the world continue to support the policies that make them worst off, unless every other policy would be even worse? Another phrase he uses is that his two principles are what people will agree to "if they can agree to anything at all." I can see the intuitive appeal behind this idea, and I agree that the Difference Principle feels much more fair than utilitarianism. However, I don't necessarily agree that people who have more wealth always have it for morally irrelevant reasons. I would consider working harder to be a morally relevant reason to have more wealth, despite the free will concerns about whether the people who work harder just got lucky with their drive to do so. Rawls' answer is that giving incentives to work harder will create better circumstances for everyone, including the worst off, so society will not equally distribute all wealth. However, I think focusing only on the worst off will result in too much redistribution, since increasing the wellbeing of any person matters to me, even if they are not the worst off person in society.
Finally, there's the question of how easy Rawls' principles are to apply in practice. He argues that they are much easier than utilitarianism, which is infamously hard to calculate, and he sees that as one of their main advantages. I see his point, but I still don't know that they're usable. I already discussed above how difficult I find it to determine whether a policy results in more or less liberty. I also think the Difference Principle will be very hard to use in practice, since the benefits of redistribution to the worst off are always very apparent, and the harms via reduced incentives etc. will be longer term and harder to predict. As a result, I suspect a society trying to follow the Difference Principle would systematically redistribute too much, even according to the Difference Principle, which is already the most possible redistribution that anyone could argue for with a straight face. Thus, I wonder if trying to make utilitarian estimates, though difficult and imprecise, would lead to less biased decisions. Alternatively, some sort of satisficing principle might be easier to apply in practice.
Overall, I disagreed with pretty much all of the book, but it had a lot of interesting things to think about.
Rawls' idea is actually pretty different, though. First, he's not using the Veil of Ignorance to determine what should happen in a specific situation, but rather what rules should govern the basic structure of society. For example, the people in what he calls the Original Position could decide between capitalism or socialism. More strangely, he says the parties do not know basic facts about themselves, like their religious beliefs, their attitudes towards risk, or their "conception of the good". At this point, I thought he had assumed away any sense of right and wrong, so I wasn't sure how people would make these decisions. However, he's using "good" in a different way. He uses the word "right" to refer to morally correct actions (i.e. "the right thing to do"). By contrast, something is "good" for a person if it would be rational for them to want it given their goals and desires. So basically he's assuming people don't know what their goals and desires in life will be, which is more reasonable. Not knowing an attitude towards risk is a bit more weird, since I think there are rational constraints on attitudes towards risk. Rawls does assume the parties are fully rational, so I'm not sure if he disagrees with me on this point, or if he means parties don't know what attitude towards risk they will have within the constraints of rationality.
I have one big complaint about Rawls' framing of the Original Position. Whenever making some decision, he suggest we make it based on the hypothetical Original Position where everyone meets who is currently alive. As Rawls points out, this means that if utilitarianism were chosen, it would almost certainly be average utilitarianism. I probably believe in some kind of total utilitarianism, and I think it's a big mistake not to give future and potential people a voice at the table, although doing so would certainly make it harder to think about.
Leaving this complication aside, I do find the Veil of Ignorance a helpful tool for thinking about moral problems, but I'm skeptical about how often it actually changes my mind on something. It's hard to tell when I'm being subconsciously influenced by my own interests, so it's easy to claim that whatever moral positions I hold would be the same under the Veil of Ignorance.
On to concrete positions. Rawls argues that in the Original Position, people would choose two principles. First, they would want society to grant each person as much liberty as is consistent with everyone having that amount. This first rule is lexically prior. Subject to it being satisfied, government should be staffed by positions that are equally open to all. Also, Primary Goods should be distributed according to the Difference Principle. Rawls defines Primary Goods as the things people want regardless of what else they want. His two main examples are money and self-esteem, although I find money a lot easier to think about when setting policy, since it can actually be redistributed. The Difference Principle says to maximize the primary goods of those who have the least - in other words, it's maximin. Rawls doesn't like the term "maximin" since it brings up connotations of risk aversion, which he doesn't think apply to conversations about society-wide redistribution rather than an individuals approach to uncertainty.
Now, I honestly had a bit of a hard time giving these rules a chance, because they sound downright ridiculous. First off, you can't have one rule be lexically prior to another, or the second rule never gets used. Here, how can you redistribute Primary Goods without infringing on someone's liberty? Also, the Difference Principle is clearly absurd. How are those who are the worst off the only ones in consideration? There's a reason maximin connotes extreme risk aversion, and wouldn't choosing the Difference Principle from the Original Position also imply extreme risk aversion? I wouldn't call it rational at all?
Rawls didn't convince me, but he put up much better arguments than I would have predicted. First, I got the impression he's not really arguing that these two principles would be morally optimal, but just that they are a practical solution to a number of problems in the way of cooperation. For example, the use of Primary Goods is to get around a major problem with utilitarianism as a definer of policy - in practice, it is all but impossible to compare different people's utility functions. Primary Goods, on the other hand, can be easily compared. (At least, money can. I dunno how Rawls proposes to measure self respect, and he didn't really discuss that.) However, once you've switched to using Primary Goods instead of utility, you can't maximize the expectation. Pretty much any utilitarian would agree that people have declining marginal utility of money, so maximizing expected money in the world would be absurd. Perhaps choosing policies that maximize the wealth of the poorest individuals would be the most reasonable.
For my objection about lexical rules, Rawls thinks this is not as much of a problem for his two principles. He agrees that if utilitarianism is your first principle, you basically can't have a second because it would never gets used. He thinks there could be many different sets of policies that maximize individual liberty, though. Honestly, I didn't really understand how he defines liberty. In any but obvious scenarios, I can't really predict what policy Rawls would support. Are mask mandates a violation of liberty, or do they actually increase everyone's liberty by improving their ability to do things without catching a disease? I think when to impose mask mandates is a tricky question, and saying that your goal is to maximize liberty doesn't really shed much light on the question.
Also, even if the rule about liberty does have ties where the second principle can be used, I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that some values are lexically prior to others. Rawls explicitly says the first principle is prior to the second because no amount of economic gain can justify any loss of liberty, and I don't agree with that at all. He didn't really argue for it though.
Another point Rawls made about the Difference Principle is that no one can claim they are being treated unjustly. By definition, everyone will have at least as much as they would in the scenario where Primary Goods are distributed equally. The people who have more have done nothing morally to deserve it (Rawls claims), but rather it is because of some talents they were born with or better opportunities they were given. Similarly, Rawls thinks people need to agree in the Original Position to policies they will continue to support no matter their position in life, and he asks how could one of the worst off people in the world continue to support the policies that make them worst off, unless every other policy would be even worse? Another phrase he uses is that his two principles are what people will agree to "if they can agree to anything at all." I can see the intuitive appeal behind this idea, and I agree that the Difference Principle feels much more fair than utilitarianism. However, I don't necessarily agree that people who have more wealth always have it for morally irrelevant reasons. I would consider working harder to be a morally relevant reason to have more wealth, despite the free will concerns about whether the people who work harder just got lucky with their drive to do so. Rawls' answer is that giving incentives to work harder will create better circumstances for everyone, including the worst off, so society will not equally distribute all wealth. However, I think focusing only on the worst off will result in too much redistribution, since increasing the wellbeing of any person matters to me, even if they are not the worst off person in society.
Finally, there's the question of how easy Rawls' principles are to apply in practice. He argues that they are much easier than utilitarianism, which is infamously hard to calculate, and he sees that as one of their main advantages. I see his point, but I still don't know that they're usable. I already discussed above how difficult I find it to determine whether a policy results in more or less liberty. I also think the Difference Principle will be very hard to use in practice, since the benefits of redistribution to the worst off are always very apparent, and the harms via reduced incentives etc. will be longer term and harder to predict. As a result, I suspect a society trying to follow the Difference Principle would systematically redistribute too much, even according to the Difference Principle, which is already the most possible redistribution that anyone could argue for with a straight face. Thus, I wonder if trying to make utilitarian estimates, though difficult and imprecise, would lead to less biased decisions. Alternatively, some sort of satisficing principle might be easier to apply in practice.
Overall, I disagreed with pretty much all of the book, but it had a lot of interesting things to think about.
July 5, 2024
Ever since Plato, political philosophy has occupied an honored position in the liberal arts curriculum. Generations of undergraduates have honed their debating skills on the canon of great minds, beginning with Plato and Aristotle and continuing with Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant etc. up to their counterparts in the twentieth century. In all this, the thinkers recognized at liberal arts colleges and universities have been of western European extraction, or belong to the antecedents of this tradition. Our case in point would be the influential American political philosopher John Rawls, whose overarching vision articulates for the modern day the core elements of the venerable tradition of political liberalism. In the present series of reviews, we wish to confront Rawls with two responses, the first of which may be seen as a logical continuation in a multicultural setting (Amartya Sen) and the second of which could be characterized as an imminent critique, to the effect that the classical political theory alone can account for both the success of and failure of Rawlsian political liberalism (Alasdair MacIntyre).
The Harvard professor Amartya Sen, who has gained prominence in the field in recent years, offers an opportune chance to study how the Western tradition of political philosophy might fare in an epoch of globalization. He is an expatriate from India who, in his formative years, received his undergraduate education in economics and mathematics from the University of Calcutta and Trinity College, Cambridge in 1955 and later, after turning to philosophy, went on to earn a doctorate under the post-Keynesian Joan Robinson in 1959. Sen’s early work in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s furthered the field of social choice theory, which took its impetus from the recent work of the American economist Kenneth Arrow and appealed to Sen by virtue of its combination of mathematics and moral philosophy. Around then, he began contributing to the field of development economics and the analysis of poverty, motivated by his childhood experience of the famine in Bengal, before making his distinctive mark in political philosophy proper centered on the concept of ‘capability’, first announced in his Tanner lecture delivered at Stanford University in 1979.
Sen’s early career coincides with the period of Rawls’ rise to prominence, culminating in his pioneering A Theory of Justice of 1971, and he may with justice be labeled a disciple of the latter in a sense to be specified below. Before entering into our main theme, though, let us begin with a sketch of Rawls’ theory of justice as Sen’s principal point of departure for his own reflections.
In framing the scope of his inquiry, Rawls spells out that justice is ‘the most important virtue of institutions’ (p. 6), and that among the variety of things to which justice pertains (sc. laws, institutions, social systems, particular actions including decisions, judgments and imputations), ‘our topic, however, is one of social justice. For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation’ (p. 7). Sen will take issue with this guiding orientation of Rawls’, as well as with his self-limitation ‘for the most part [to] examine the principles of justice that would regulate a well-ordered society’ (p. 8), on the assumption that ‘a deeper understanding can be gained in no other way’ (p. 9). By this, Rawls purposes to speculate on what a well-ordered society would look like, if everyone acted strictly according to justice in all his dealings with others and upheld just institutions. Moreover, Rawls’ focus will fall primarily upon strict compliance as opposed to partial compliance; i.e., on describing what should happen in principle rather than on how to deal with punishment, just war and other such responses to infractions of a perfectly just order.
The core elements of Rawlsian theory can be presented succinctly. His ambition is to supplant the familiar social contract theory, which in his view does not approach the problem of justice from a sufficiently high level of abstraction. Rather than ‘think of the original contract as one to enter a particular society or to set up a particular form of government…the guiding idea is that the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the object of the original agreement. They are the principles that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association. These principles are to regulate all further agreements; they specify the kinds of social cooperation that can be entered into and the forms of government that can be established. This way of regarding the principles of justice I shall call justice as fairness’ (p. 11). Rawls’ key innovation of the original position introduced here corresponds to the state of nature in traditional social contract theory. We learn that, in the original position, everyone will be ‘rational and disinterested’ (p. 13) and that circumstances in the original position are characterized by ‘symmetry of everyone’s relations to each other’ (p. 12), meaning everyone starts, in principle, from a fair status quo (hence the propriety of the moniker, ‘justice as fairness’).
For a theory of justice thus framed, the problem of first order is to elucidate what choice of principles by which to structure political arrangements people in the original position would make. Rawls settles on two: 1) equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties; 2) the difference principle, to the effect that inequalities in social and economic affairs (as opposed to basic rights and duties) are to be deemed just if and only if they yield compensating benefits for everyone else, in particular, the least well advantaged. One might suspect that the difference principle could lead Rawls to a concern for the outcomes realized under a given order and for redistributive measures by which to ameliorate them, but that would be to miss an essential point. For Rawls, the two principles are lexicographically ordered in the sense that liberty always has a presumptive priority, and any redistributive efforts could come into consideration only once fundamental liberties are secured. Hence, the priority of right over good in justice as fairness, as expounded by Rawls. Why so, from the point of view of high abstraction? For Rawls’ manner of reasoning, any interests requiring violation of strict justice of property law, for instance (e.g. on behalf of redistribution of wealth), would have no value in the eyes of a person under the veil of ignorance in the original position. For, unlike conventional approaches to political philosophy, people’s desires and aspirations are not to be taken as empirically given, but rather will be restricted from the outset by boundaries imposed by a prior commitment to justice for others; hence, one should, in the original position, be reluctant to infringe on property rights for the sake of relieving social and economic inequalities.
The bulk of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice is devoted to a theoretical section on the critique of the alternatives of utilitarianism and intuitionism and to a practical section on applications of the theory to problems such as the philosophical basis of constitutional liberty, distributive justice and the role of civil disobedience and conscientious objection. In a concluding third part, Rawls seeks to formulate a rational doctrine of the good and moral development consistent with his concept of justice as fairness. Despite the popularity Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness has enjoyed among academic circles since its publication two generations ago, it suffers from some drawbacks when recourse is taken to it as a tool with which to inform policy decisions in the real world. Its formal perfection is too rigid to be adaptable to the sinuous contours of embodied human life.
Amartya Sen has assumed as his career project the effort to translate political theory into practice. What will matter to Sen in all this is not so much the content or moral propositions taken individually, as the philosopher’s claim to merit general acceptance of his position on rational grounds. For Sen, the arrogance of such a stance is off-putting because it commits one to a modus operandi inappropriate to the practical resolution of disputes in the real world, which must be comprehended under anyone’s concern for justice, if it is to be real rather than merely notional. Sen’s project in his Idea of Justice is to explore what becomes of philosophical reflection on the problem of justice once one gives up on the goal of imposing a single theoretical ideal on everyone. Hence, we undertake to review him next (see here).
Another riposte to Rawlsian political theorizing would be the following: his proceduralism is unrealistic since it lacks the ‘thickness’ of understanding of the good that must be embodied in any living tradition. Logically speaking, how could a disinterested participant in the original position decide what precepts ought to govern the society to which he would like to belong without knowing what is good? The objection to Kantian deontology goes back to Hegel: suppose we have no concern at all for the institution of private property and willingly subscribe to an ethic of ‘might makes right’. Then theft would cease to be wrong, per se.
The ideology of western political liberalism is therefore self-contradictory, for its vaunted aim in theory at neutrality among competing conceptions of the good, in principle, belies the fact that it too, imposes its own paradoxical view of the good life, though surreptitiously. For, in practice, it strips away the civic society that Alexis de Tocqueville once so admired in the early American republic so as to replace it with the monolithic nanny state presiding over atomized individuals. In other words, precisely the absence of any common substantive view of the good eventuates in the moral chaos that serves as the liberal’s pretext for stepping in and imposing his hegemonic control. Indeed, the very defining element of the liberal mind-set may fittingly be captured with the ancient Greek term pleonexia, in other words, the insatiable desire for power over other men’s consciences – just the opposite of the classical political theory of the ancients, who stress, rather, self-responsibility and self-rule founded upon a substantive conception of the good to be derived from the nature of man!
The political theorist who, more than any other on the current scene, has devoted his attention to a critique of Rawlsian liberalism from this quarter is Alasdair MacIntrye. In After Virtue (1981), he argues for a revival of virtue ethics. Why? Common to Rawls and to Sen is the presumption that moral life is to be conceived as a simple rule-following exercise: throw all the conditions into the machine and out comes a set of maxims that, if followed, would bring about the desired social order! Sen differs from Rawls only in his judgments about how to weight the various factors. But MacIntyre perceives that political life could never adequately be reduced to an algorithm and that a desirable outcome is more likely to come about if the participants are trained in the respective virtues and, thus, know how to make due allowances for the goods at stake under any given set of circumstances. MacIntyre has gone on to analyze at greater length how a virtue ethic might work in practice in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988) and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990). For our forthcoming reviews of MacIntrye’s tendentious yet judicious work, see here, here and here.
The Harvard professor Amartya Sen, who has gained prominence in the field in recent years, offers an opportune chance to study how the Western tradition of political philosophy might fare in an epoch of globalization. He is an expatriate from India who, in his formative years, received his undergraduate education in economics and mathematics from the University of Calcutta and Trinity College, Cambridge in 1955 and later, after turning to philosophy, went on to earn a doctorate under the post-Keynesian Joan Robinson in 1959. Sen’s early work in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s furthered the field of social choice theory, which took its impetus from the recent work of the American economist Kenneth Arrow and appealed to Sen by virtue of its combination of mathematics and moral philosophy. Around then, he began contributing to the field of development economics and the analysis of poverty, motivated by his childhood experience of the famine in Bengal, before making his distinctive mark in political philosophy proper centered on the concept of ‘capability’, first announced in his Tanner lecture delivered at Stanford University in 1979.
Sen’s early career coincides with the period of Rawls’ rise to prominence, culminating in his pioneering A Theory of Justice of 1971, and he may with justice be labeled a disciple of the latter in a sense to be specified below. Before entering into our main theme, though, let us begin with a sketch of Rawls’ theory of justice as Sen’s principal point of departure for his own reflections.
In framing the scope of his inquiry, Rawls spells out that justice is ‘the most important virtue of institutions’ (p. 6), and that among the variety of things to which justice pertains (sc. laws, institutions, social systems, particular actions including decisions, judgments and imputations), ‘our topic, however, is one of social justice. For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation’ (p. 7). Sen will take issue with this guiding orientation of Rawls’, as well as with his self-limitation ‘for the most part [to] examine the principles of justice that would regulate a well-ordered society’ (p. 8), on the assumption that ‘a deeper understanding can be gained in no other way’ (p. 9). By this, Rawls purposes to speculate on what a well-ordered society would look like, if everyone acted strictly according to justice in all his dealings with others and upheld just institutions. Moreover, Rawls’ focus will fall primarily upon strict compliance as opposed to partial compliance; i.e., on describing what should happen in principle rather than on how to deal with punishment, just war and other such responses to infractions of a perfectly just order.
The core elements of Rawlsian theory can be presented succinctly. His ambition is to supplant the familiar social contract theory, which in his view does not approach the problem of justice from a sufficiently high level of abstraction. Rather than ‘think of the original contract as one to enter a particular society or to set up a particular form of government…the guiding idea is that the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the object of the original agreement. They are the principles that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association. These principles are to regulate all further agreements; they specify the kinds of social cooperation that can be entered into and the forms of government that can be established. This way of regarding the principles of justice I shall call justice as fairness’ (p. 11). Rawls’ key innovation of the original position introduced here corresponds to the state of nature in traditional social contract theory. We learn that, in the original position, everyone will be ‘rational and disinterested’ (p. 13) and that circumstances in the original position are characterized by ‘symmetry of everyone’s relations to each other’ (p. 12), meaning everyone starts, in principle, from a fair status quo (hence the propriety of the moniker, ‘justice as fairness’).
For a theory of justice thus framed, the problem of first order is to elucidate what choice of principles by which to structure political arrangements people in the original position would make. Rawls settles on two: 1) equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties; 2) the difference principle, to the effect that inequalities in social and economic affairs (as opposed to basic rights and duties) are to be deemed just if and only if they yield compensating benefits for everyone else, in particular, the least well advantaged. One might suspect that the difference principle could lead Rawls to a concern for the outcomes realized under a given order and for redistributive measures by which to ameliorate them, but that would be to miss an essential point. For Rawls, the two principles are lexicographically ordered in the sense that liberty always has a presumptive priority, and any redistributive efforts could come into consideration only once fundamental liberties are secured. Hence, the priority of right over good in justice as fairness, as expounded by Rawls. Why so, from the point of view of high abstraction? For Rawls’ manner of reasoning, any interests requiring violation of strict justice of property law, for instance (e.g. on behalf of redistribution of wealth), would have no value in the eyes of a person under the veil of ignorance in the original position. For, unlike conventional approaches to political philosophy, people’s desires and aspirations are not to be taken as empirically given, but rather will be restricted from the outset by boundaries imposed by a prior commitment to justice for others; hence, one should, in the original position, be reluctant to infringe on property rights for the sake of relieving social and economic inequalities.
The bulk of Rawls’ A Theory of Justice is devoted to a theoretical section on the critique of the alternatives of utilitarianism and intuitionism and to a practical section on applications of the theory to problems such as the philosophical basis of constitutional liberty, distributive justice and the role of civil disobedience and conscientious objection. In a concluding third part, Rawls seeks to formulate a rational doctrine of the good and moral development consistent with his concept of justice as fairness. Despite the popularity Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness has enjoyed among academic circles since its publication two generations ago, it suffers from some drawbacks when recourse is taken to it as a tool with which to inform policy decisions in the real world. Its formal perfection is too rigid to be adaptable to the sinuous contours of embodied human life.
Amartya Sen has assumed as his career project the effort to translate political theory into practice. What will matter to Sen in all this is not so much the content or moral propositions taken individually, as the philosopher’s claim to merit general acceptance of his position on rational grounds. For Sen, the arrogance of such a stance is off-putting because it commits one to a modus operandi inappropriate to the practical resolution of disputes in the real world, which must be comprehended under anyone’s concern for justice, if it is to be real rather than merely notional. Sen’s project in his Idea of Justice is to explore what becomes of philosophical reflection on the problem of justice once one gives up on the goal of imposing a single theoretical ideal on everyone. Hence, we undertake to review him next (see here).
Another riposte to Rawlsian political theorizing would be the following: his proceduralism is unrealistic since it lacks the ‘thickness’ of understanding of the good that must be embodied in any living tradition. Logically speaking, how could a disinterested participant in the original position decide what precepts ought to govern the society to which he would like to belong without knowing what is good? The objection to Kantian deontology goes back to Hegel: suppose we have no concern at all for the institution of private property and willingly subscribe to an ethic of ‘might makes right’. Then theft would cease to be wrong, per se.
The ideology of western political liberalism is therefore self-contradictory, for its vaunted aim in theory at neutrality among competing conceptions of the good, in principle, belies the fact that it too, imposes its own paradoxical view of the good life, though surreptitiously. For, in practice, it strips away the civic society that Alexis de Tocqueville once so admired in the early American republic so as to replace it with the monolithic nanny state presiding over atomized individuals. In other words, precisely the absence of any common substantive view of the good eventuates in the moral chaos that serves as the liberal’s pretext for stepping in and imposing his hegemonic control. Indeed, the very defining element of the liberal mind-set may fittingly be captured with the ancient Greek term pleonexia, in other words, the insatiable desire for power over other men’s consciences – just the opposite of the classical political theory of the ancients, who stress, rather, self-responsibility and self-rule founded upon a substantive conception of the good to be derived from the nature of man!
The political theorist who, more than any other on the current scene, has devoted his attention to a critique of Rawlsian liberalism from this quarter is Alasdair MacIntrye. In After Virtue (1981), he argues for a revival of virtue ethics. Why? Common to Rawls and to Sen is the presumption that moral life is to be conceived as a simple rule-following exercise: throw all the conditions into the machine and out comes a set of maxims that, if followed, would bring about the desired social order! Sen differs from Rawls only in his judgments about how to weight the various factors. But MacIntyre perceives that political life could never adequately be reduced to an algorithm and that a desirable outcome is more likely to come about if the participants are trained in the respective virtues and, thus, know how to make due allowances for the goods at stake under any given set of circumstances. MacIntyre has gone on to analyze at greater length how a virtue ethic might work in practice in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988) and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990). For our forthcoming reviews of MacIntrye’s tendentious yet judicious work, see here, here and here.
July 31, 2012
John Rawls' magnum opus 'A Theory of Justice' (this copy was the 2nd ed.) is such a staple of contemporary political and moral philosophy that it is difficult for an amateur like me to review it. Given the nature of the project Rawls sought to accomplish, it is only good and proper that a dozen years' research into both this and his other (and better, in my opinion) opus, 'Political Liberalism', would produce a decent review of Rawlsian Justice as a whole. However, as somebody who takes many of Rawls' ideas as set out in this book very seriously - without necessarily agreeing with them - I shall do my best.
Let's get this out the way first. Yes, the book is dry. So, so dry. Even the most ardent Rawls fan will accept that his writing style is not particularly suited to a volume of this size. In fact, before tackling this particular work, I would recommend would-be Rawls readers to digest 'A Kantian Concept of Equality', which is a quite excellent article by the great man. Following that, I'd recommend either of the volumes containing Rawls' lectures, where we get to see how a great and novel philosopher views other great and novel philosophers. That's right: I'd recommend going through journals and Rawls' lectures before reading this volume.
In short, then, Rawls' idea is not hugely difficult to grasp. At its base, the idea is a mixture of utilitarianism and Kantianism. Individuals are separate, and are ends in themselves, while the welfare of society as a whole must also be considered. This is not to say these are a priori concerns for Rawls. Unlike many left-leaning liberals of his time, he did not take this as self-evident. Rawlsian justice consists of a thorough and often overly-elaborate discussion on the nature of what is just, what individuals are entitled to, and the demarcation between individual earnings and societal need. The discussion is often needlessly elaborate. Contrast Rawls' description of the difference principle with his discussion on classical utilitarianism. Arguably the latter deserves more time than the former, but nevertheless one can't help but think they might both have been given equal treatment with much less text.
However, deficiencies in style aside, this book is a must-read for anybody with any kind of interest in political or moral philosophy. The reasons are threefold:
1) Rawlsian justice, as a concept, was hugely influential at the time and is still influential today.
2) In historical terms, Rawls' theory gave left-liberals everywhere a much more solid philosophical basis to their egalitarian leanings.
3) Just read it, or nobody will pay attention to you in discussions of contemporary philosophy.
My reasoning for the 3 star rating is that the style is so poor as to make it a real struggle to get through the entire volume. Furthermore, while I find the philosophy to be both fascinating and deeply profound, I do feel 'A Theory of Justice' has had an effect on modern philosophy disproportionate to the value it has. As aforementioned, I consider 'Political Liberalism' to be a much better-written and ultimately more convincing discussion of left-liberalism. 'A Theory of Justice' is probably necessary for understanding contemporary political theory, but is definitely not sufficient.
That aside, you'd be a fool not to at least familiarise yourself with the salient chapters at least. I have completed this book once, but read the early chapters dozens of times. And, honestly, you can probably get away with that.
Let's get this out the way first. Yes, the book is dry. So, so dry. Even the most ardent Rawls fan will accept that his writing style is not particularly suited to a volume of this size. In fact, before tackling this particular work, I would recommend would-be Rawls readers to digest 'A Kantian Concept of Equality', which is a quite excellent article by the great man. Following that, I'd recommend either of the volumes containing Rawls' lectures, where we get to see how a great and novel philosopher views other great and novel philosophers. That's right: I'd recommend going through journals and Rawls' lectures before reading this volume.
In short, then, Rawls' idea is not hugely difficult to grasp. At its base, the idea is a mixture of utilitarianism and Kantianism. Individuals are separate, and are ends in themselves, while the welfare of society as a whole must also be considered. This is not to say these are a priori concerns for Rawls. Unlike many left-leaning liberals of his time, he did not take this as self-evident. Rawlsian justice consists of a thorough and often overly-elaborate discussion on the nature of what is just, what individuals are entitled to, and the demarcation between individual earnings and societal need. The discussion is often needlessly elaborate. Contrast Rawls' description of the difference principle with his discussion on classical utilitarianism. Arguably the latter deserves more time than the former, but nevertheless one can't help but think they might both have been given equal treatment with much less text.
However, deficiencies in style aside, this book is a must-read for anybody with any kind of interest in political or moral philosophy. The reasons are threefold:
1) Rawlsian justice, as a concept, was hugely influential at the time and is still influential today.
2) In historical terms, Rawls' theory gave left-liberals everywhere a much more solid philosophical basis to their egalitarian leanings.
3) Just read it, or nobody will pay attention to you in discussions of contemporary philosophy.
My reasoning for the 3 star rating is that the style is so poor as to make it a real struggle to get through the entire volume. Furthermore, while I find the philosophy to be both fascinating and deeply profound, I do feel 'A Theory of Justice' has had an effect on modern philosophy disproportionate to the value it has. As aforementioned, I consider 'Political Liberalism' to be a much better-written and ultimately more convincing discussion of left-liberalism. 'A Theory of Justice' is probably necessary for understanding contemporary political theory, but is definitely not sufficient.
That aside, you'd be a fool not to at least familiarise yourself with the salient chapters at least. I have completed this book once, but read the early chapters dozens of times. And, honestly, you can probably get away with that.
July 12, 2020
A Theory of Justice is arguably the fullest expression of political liberalism ever written. It starts from the moral assumption that accidents of birth—whether one is born rich or poor, white or black, abled or disabled, and so on—are unfair. To envision a fair society, Rawls introduces the “veil of ignorance”. Behind the conceptual veil of ignorance, accidents of birth are stripped away until only general facts about human nature and society remain. It is from behind this veil that participants are invited to organise the basic structure of society, which includes the type of laws, the level of toleration, the amount of wealth redistribution, and so on. For Rawls, a just society is one whose basic structure is agreed to under conditions of fairness. A society agreed to from behind the veil of ignorance is fair. Thus, a just society is one agreed to from behind the veil of ignorance.
Rawls argues that participants behind the veil would agree to two principles:
The book is divided into three sections. In the first two sections, Rawls fleshes out the assumptions and implications of his theory. In the third section, Rawls sets himself the much harder task of justifying his theory. He does so by arguing that it is rational (in one’s self-interest) to act justly. He offers three main arguments for this, foremost among them being that acting justly expresses one’s human nature as a free and equal rational being. That is, by acting according to the two principles, we’re free from the accidents of our birth and stand in a place of equality with the rest of humanity.
Grounding justice in rationality is a hard sell. Whereas I found the book’s first two sections rigorous and systematic, I found the third section disjointed and implausible. Rawls’ two principles of justice are extremely demanding and very few people, if any, live up to them. If I understand Rawls correctly, the fact almost nobody lives up to Rawls’ principles leads to two alternatives: either almost everybody is not rational, or Rawls’ theory is not rational. The latter seems far more plausible.
Despite my disagreements with the third section, I still rate the book 5 stars. It’s some of the clearest and most systematic philosophy I’ve ever read. Moreover, it uncovers the intellectual foundations of liberalism, which for better or worse, is the dominant moral and political ideology of the modern West. I recommend this book, especially the first three chapters, to anybody interested in understanding the doctrine that shapes us.
Rawls argues that participants behind the veil would agree to two principles:
1) Liberty principle: “Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all”
2) Equality principle: “Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.”
The book is divided into three sections. In the first two sections, Rawls fleshes out the assumptions and implications of his theory. In the third section, Rawls sets himself the much harder task of justifying his theory. He does so by arguing that it is rational (in one’s self-interest) to act justly. He offers three main arguments for this, foremost among them being that acting justly expresses one’s human nature as a free and equal rational being. That is, by acting according to the two principles, we’re free from the accidents of our birth and stand in a place of equality with the rest of humanity.
Grounding justice in rationality is a hard sell. Whereas I found the book’s first two sections rigorous and systematic, I found the third section disjointed and implausible. Rawls’ two principles of justice are extremely demanding and very few people, if any, live up to them. If I understand Rawls correctly, the fact almost nobody lives up to Rawls’ principles leads to two alternatives: either almost everybody is not rational, or Rawls’ theory is not rational. The latter seems far more plausible.
Despite my disagreements with the third section, I still rate the book 5 stars. It’s some of the clearest and most systematic philosophy I’ve ever read. Moreover, it uncovers the intellectual foundations of liberalism, which for better or worse, is the dominant moral and political ideology of the modern West. I recommend this book, especially the first three chapters, to anybody interested in understanding the doctrine that shapes us.
December 14, 2012
This book is truly a modern classic. First published around 1970, it is the fountainhead of the modern renaissance of political philosophy and theory which is still going strong four decades later. It is built around the choices Rawls believes people would make if they were behind a veil of ignorance - unable to see the consequences of their choices. This device has by itself provoked a huge response, including Robert Nozick's very interesting Anarchy, State and Utopia with its argument for at least a minimal state. Rawls identifies two principles of justice.
Even those who reject Rawls' argument on a variety of grounds will find some pages of deeply interesting and insightful comments, and for those who are comfortable with his fundamentally Kantian perspective and style of argumentation, moving on to his later restatements and refinements of the basic view will be very attractive. In particular, see Justice As Fairness: A Restatement.
The influence of A Theory of Justice only continues to grow.
Even those who reject Rawls' argument on a variety of grounds will find some pages of deeply interesting and insightful comments, and for those who are comfortable with his fundamentally Kantian perspective and style of argumentation, moving on to his later restatements and refinements of the basic view will be very attractive. In particular, see Justice As Fairness: A Restatement.
The influence of A Theory of Justice only continues to grow.
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