John Rawls:
Theory of Justice 1971
“Justice as Fairness” 1958
Social contract theory in which parties contract to establish the
principles of justice
They are the principles that free and rational persons in an initial
position o fequality 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.” TJ section 3
Justice
1. Justice is Distributive
“Is everyone getting their fair share of the pie?”
“Am I and are you getting a fair share of the pie?”
2. Justice is Social
Applies to the “basic structure of society”.
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions as truth is of
systems of thought.” TJ p. 3
3. Justice is normative
If laws and institutions are unjust they should be changed!
Good
In TJ JR makes use of two concepts of good
1.
The ‘thin’ concept or ‘formal’ concept of primary social
good.
2.
A rich or thick concept of the good – good life for man. Moral
conception of the good – way of life.
PSG is defined as the things person wants whatever else they want.
They are the things a rational social agent must want, in order to
be able to pursue their conception of the good, whatever that may
be.
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For example: “liberty and opportunity, income and wealth and the
bases of self-respect”.
PSG’s are not controversial, can be specifed by philosopher.
Principles of Justice (the Right)
First Principle of Justice – the Principle of Liberty
1.
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive
basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for others.
Second principle of Justice – The Difference Principle
2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they
are both
a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged
b) attached to offices and positions open to all under
conditions of fair equality of opportunity
First and second principals are lexically or serially ordered.
The upshot: “ All social values…[primary social goods] are to be
distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of
these values is to everyone’s advantage.” TJ62
Distributions:
1-1-1
4-0-4
1-1-2
5-5-5
5.1-5.1-1,999,999.
Justification of the Principles of Justice
A:
The Original Position
OP is an hypothesis of a contractual situation of initial equality, in
which social agents come to decide which principles of justice to
accept.
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Assumptions
a)
persons are rational choosers
b)
persons stand behind a veil of ignorance
c)
persons are risk averse
Under such conditions persons will choose the two principles of
justice.
“The idea of the original position is to set up a fair procedure so
that any principles agreed to will be just.”
? Is the Original Position ‘rigged’?
“We want to define the original position so that we get the desired
solution” JR TJ 141.
B:
Reflective Equilibrium
Narrow Reflective Equilibrium
Principles of Justice checked against our considered moral
intuitions, and our considered moral intuitions are checked back
against PJ’s. TJ. 20
Objections
1.
Conservatism.
2.
Does not deal with the charge that it has been rigged.
Justification of the principles might have been rigged i.e. the
principles constructed with the help of to the very same
values against which they are subsequently checked and
confirmed. The whole process might be self-validating
The Communitarian Critique of Rawls:
Taylor and Sandel: RL has a misplaced evaluation of freedom
(negative freedom of individuals).
Rawlsian subjects value freedom (the capacity to choose) above all
and they value nothing but freedom.
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M& R claim that Rawls implies radical voluntarist picture about
peoples end. That they only value ends they pursue because and
insofar as they are the ends they have chosen.
a)
There can be no meaningful choices, since there is no basis
for choosing one life-project over another.
b)
Gets things the wrong way round. The ends must be valuable
in themselves and valued by those who pursue them.
Are the communitarians attacking a straw man?
Must a good Rawlsian liberal must value freedom above all?
Must a good Rawlsian liberal must only value freedom?
2.
The Unencumbered Self.
Rawl’s liberalism gives a wrong picture of the self.
Rawls argues that teleological theories (theories that say there is
some end that human beings should strive to realise or maximise)
gets things the wrong way round. They are “radically
misconceived” since they relate the right and the good in the wrong
way.
“We should not attempt to give form to our lives by first looking to
the good independently defined [GF e.g. the pursuit of happiness,
pleasure or philosophy]. It is not our aims that primarily reveal our
nature, but rather the principles that we would acknowledge to
govern the background conditions under which these aims are to
be formed and the manner in which they are to be pursued. For the
self is prior to the ends which are affirmed by it.” TJ 560.
Rawls maintains that individual persons reserve the right to refine
and revise their life projects even their deepest ends and
attachments.
Sandel : This implies an unencumbered self’ prior, and at a
distance to, its aims or ends. This “rules out the possibility of
…constitutive ends”.
“For the unencumbered self, what matters above all, what is
most essential to our personhood are not the ends we choose
but our capacity to choose them.”
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“Only if the self is prior to its ends can the right be prior to
the good. Only if my identity is never tied to the aims and
interests I may have at any moment can I think of myself as a
free and independent agent.”
The self is a kind of radically unattached, individual chooser, with
no substance, constituted antecedently to society.
MacIntyre: After Virtue
‘…we all approach our own circumstances as the bearers of a
particular social identity. I am soneone’s son or daughter, someone
elses cousin or uncle.: I am a citizen of this or that city, a member
fo this or that guild or profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe,
this nation.’
MacIntyre contrasts this with the liberal individualism of
Rawlsians (and Kantians!!) who claim: ‘I am what I myself choose
to be. I can always, if I wish to, put in question what are taken to be
the merely contingent social features of my existence.’ p. 204
Maybe the communitarians are making the assumption that the
original position is an implicit social ontology, a picture of what
society is, and a picture of what selves are supposed to be? For
there does seem to be a much bigger gap between the self and its
ends.
Is the original position a model of society? Are the selves behind
the veil of ignorance real people?
Kymlicka’s Defence of Rawls: The Reply to Sandel
Anyway the claim that the self is prior to its ends is only that, in a
liberal society, no life-project or attachment or end, however deep,
is beyond re-examination and revision. This seems largely true – as
a matter of fact.
One might argue that if I am encumbered with anything it is with
parents and siblings. I cannot choose them. But I can, in a liberal
society, choose whether or not I incorporate them into my lifeproject and to what degree.
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So the communtarians should not want to deny this claim about
the revisability of aims. Sandel might allow that a self can have
constitutive attachments/ends, but that these can change. So the
encumbered self can constitute and reconstitute itself anew.
And on his part the liberal need not deny that there are social
preconditions of everyone’s being able to exercise this choice.
Now the two pictures begin to converge. Rawls says there is a small
gap between the self and its ends, and that the latter is prior in
order to ground the revisability claim. The communitarian claims
that there is no gap, my ends or attachments constitute my self,
and that the priority goes the other way.
What is the real issue between the liberals individualist and the
communitarian?
Rawls is making normative claims: that each person should
be free to interpret and re-interprets his or her own life as he
or she sees fit;
Philosophical claim: second, that the principles of justice
provide a framework within which this freedom is assured,
Political claim that establishing the framework of a just wellordered society is the central task of politics and political
theory.
2.
Second communitarian objection. Rawls paints wrong
picture of society – no “constitutive attachments” – no
conception of belonging or membership in a community.
Objections to Communitarianism:
1.
Communitarian Charge that Rawls give a Rationalist Defence
of Justice
OP justifies principle of justice are the product of rational deliberation by
agents in
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OP makes these agents so bare that they are incapable of choice.
Rawls resolves this by tacitly supposing a kind of community where
everyone’s assets (even those inherited by birth) are jointly held in
common and then distributed equally
2.
Kymlicka: No difference between Rawls’s view that the self is
prior to its ends and Sandel’s view that selves have constitutive end
and attachments:
Sandel allow that a self can have constitutive attachments/ends, but that
these can change. So the encumbered self can constitute and reconstitute
itself anew.
Once he allows that, no only are identities not fixed, but that the subject
can have some input in the reconstitution of his or her identity, then the
distinction between the two positions begins to disappear.
And on his part the liberal need not deny that there are social
preconditions of everyone’s being able to exercise this choice.
The theses below, thus understood are not inconsistent.
‘The self is prior to its ends.’ (Rawls)
‘The self has constitutive ends.’ (Sandel)
MacIntyre: What is the good life?
“The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for
man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable
us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is.” (After
Virtue 204)
3.
The encumbered self may be constituted by antecedent
attachments and substantive ends but these are local. They give rise
to one of the problems to which a well-ordered political community is
the answer.
MacIntyre: After Virtue
‘…we all approach our own circumstances as the bearers of a particular
social identity. I am soneone’s son or daughter, someone else’s cousin or
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uncle.: I am a citizen of this or that city, a member of this or that guild or
profession; I belong to this clan, that tribe, this nation.’
Insofar as this is true, we are not shaped (constituted is just too strong!) or
influenced by our membership in a political community. It is family,
locality, and the immediate environment that shape our ends.
Communitarians overestimate the shaping and socialising effect of
membership in a political community. They mistakenly assume that a
political community will have a largely homogenous set of substantive
values, and have no answer to the problem of pluralism and diversity.
4.
What is the actual substantive difference between
communitarians and liberals. How do communitarians theorize
about politics and conceive of the political community? Almost
nothing.
What is the real issue between the liberals individualist and the
communitarian?
 Rawls is making normative claims: that each person should be
free to interpret and re-interprets his or her own life as he or she
sees fit;
 Political claim that establishing the framework of a just wellordered society is the central task of politics and political theory.
 Philosophical claim: second, that the principles of justice
provide a framework within which this freedom is assured.
5.
My objection to Communitarianism
Sandel and MacIntyre appear to make two separate sets of objections.
A
Rawls (and liberalism) has the wrong social ontology – wrong
picture of the self and its relation to society.
1.
Rawls and liberals in general (including Kant!) give the wrong
picture of the self and society. The liberal self has no “constitutive
attachments” it is a ‘ghost’ or a ‘cipher’.
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2.
Society and membership in a political community has no preeminent or inherent value. Wrong conception of belonging Rawlsian selves have a purely instrumental or prudential relation to
the political community.
Community is evacuated of meaning – because all selves are
purged of anything specific and particular in the OP, and are thus
made the same by a device of the philosopher. Of course they agree
on the principles because, having been made the same, it is just as
if there is only one of them.)
B.
Liberalism (and liberal ideas) has given rise to a wrong social
ontology in a different sense: it has produced a bad society,
fragmented communities, destroyed the shared understandings and
formative attachments of communities and emptied our lives of
shared meaning.
Sandel deplores what he calls “the shift in our practices and institutions,
from a public philosophy of common purposes to one of fair
procedures, from a politics of the good to a politics of right, from
the national republic to the procedural republic.”
Communitarinaism and Liberalism p. 27 (Avinieri and de-Shalit)
He blames Rawls conception of liberalism as a kind of simple
reflection of this wretched state of man’s and women’s alienation
from themselves sand their community
A. and B. when conceived as criticisms of Rawls pull in entirely opposite
directions. If A. is true, then surely B. cannot be.
Does Rawls give an accurate picture of a ‘wrong’ ‘false’ or bad liberal
society (bad because emptied of shared social meaning and populated by
beings alienated from themselves and each other)?
Or does he give an inaccurate report of a society that has not been so
damaged and emptied of meaning and in which people are actually
shaped by communities, constitutive ends and value their membership in
communities and so forth.
This problem arises because Sandel attempts to get a one-size fits all
critique of liberalism (as an historical force) and as Rawlsian theory. And
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its not clear that when he is railing against liberalism he’s not actually
railing against modernisation and social forces, and a tide of history that
cannot be turned back, certainly not by a change of philosophy.
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