A Theory of Justice: sections 1-4
Chapter 1
(1) what are utilitarianism and perfectionism?
(2) have utilitarianism and perfectionism dominated our philosophical tradition?
(3) have they dominated our political practices?
(4) why is it necessary to work out alternatives to them?
(5) why does the goal of working out alternatives to perfectionism drop out, so that utilitarianism
seems to be the sole target?
1. The Role of Justice
(1) is justice the first virtue of social institutions? what are others? does this way of putting our
convictions illegitimately separate the right and the good from the start?
(2) what is a well-ordered society? is the contemporary United States well-ordered by justice as
fairness? well-ordered at all?
(3) explain the distinction between a concept and a conception of justice.
(4) why can’t we assess conceptions of justice by their distributive consequences alone?
2. The Subject of Justice
(1) what is the primary subject of justice and what does it include?
(2) if principles of justice apply to the whole, do they therefore apply to the parts as well?
(3) why not start with what sorts of actions it is just or unjust for individuals to perform? why
not start with just and unjust individual contracts?
(4) explain the difference between partial and strict compliance theories. why isn’t strict
compliance as unrealistic an idealizing assumption as the assumption of limitless plenty? if it is,
does this pose a problem for Rawls’s project?
(5) is Rawls correct to take as his primary subject the basic structure of a self-contained modern
state at just the time when non-state actors, inter-state conflicts are assuming increasing
importance?
(6) is Rawls right to say that there is no conflict with “the traditional notion” of justice as Aristotle
understood it? to determine whether Rawls is right, consider: do all of his principles curb
pleonexia or do just some of them do so? If the difference principle does but, say, the first
principle does not, what does this say about Rawls’s continuity with tradition?
3. The Main Idea of the Theory
(1) what does Rawls mean by saying that his theory carries the contract doctrine “to a higher
level of abstraction”?
(2) why is the name “justice as fairness” appropriate, in Rawls’s view?
(3) does the notion of fairness have enough appeal to bear the weight Rawls gives it, or is it too
unimportant, relative to the other virtues, to be foundational in this way?
(4) is it really true that “a society satisfying the principles of justice as fairness comes as close as a
society can to being a voluntary scheme”? why not, direct democracy? direct democracy with a
unanimity constraint? a deliberative democracy in which fundamental terms of association were
always “up for grabs”? a democracy with institutional measures to encourage enough political
discussion that citizens had the opportunity to reaffirm and internalize the fundamental terms?
(5) how, if at all, does this alleged voluntariness help Rawls answer the objection that all societies
manufacture consent and that manufactured consent cannot confer legitimacy?
(6) distinguish mutual disinterest from egoism.
(7) why is rationality interpreted narrowly, as standard in economic theory? doesn’t human
rationality include far more than what is imputed to parties in the original position?
(8) what does Rawls mean by saying that principles result from “leaving aside those aspects of
the social world that seem arbitrary from a moral point of view”? are they arbitrary?
4. The Original Position and Justificiation
(1) why is choice in the original position thought of as a problem of deliberation? why isn’t it a
problem of bargaining? should there be bargaining in the original position, even if there isn’t?
(2) what does it mean to say that one or another interpretation of the initial situation is the most
philosophically favored?
(3) why is it important to begin from weak and widely shared assumptions?
(4) what does Rawls mean by saying “the idea here is simply to make vivid to ourselves the
restrictions it seems reasonable to impose on arguments for principles of justice”?
(5) Rawls says “the aim is to rule out those principles that it would be rational to propose ... only
if one knew certain things that are irrelevant from the standpoint of justice”. at the end of the
previous section, Rawls speaks, not of “the standpoint of justice” but of “the moral point of
view”. is there an illicit slide between the two? what difference, if any, does this make?
(6) how does Rawls understand moral personality (see p. 19)?
(7) what does he mean by saying that “systems of ends are not ranked in value”?
(8) what is reflective equilibrium?
(9) it is sometimes said that parties submit to the conditions on the original position, and accept
the principles arrived at, simply because of their need to secure the cooperation of others. the
original position may make this possible (see p. 15n6). is this the sole justification for the
conditions?