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Outline of The Scope For The Principles of Justice

John Rawls was an American political philosopher who developed a theory of justice as fairness to describe a just liberal society. His theory includes two main principles of justice: 1) each person has equal basic rights and liberties, and 2) social and economic inequalities are permitted only if they benefit the least well-off members of society and positions are open to all. Rawls argued these principles would be chosen unanimously from an original position behind a veil of ignorance, where people do not know their abilities or social status, ensuring a fair outcome.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
61 views3 pages

Outline of The Scope For The Principles of Justice

John Rawls was an American political philosopher who developed a theory of justice as fairness to describe a just liberal society. His theory includes two main principles of justice: 1) each person has equal basic rights and liberties, and 2) social and economic inequalities are permitted only if they benefit the least well-off members of society and positions are open to all. Rawls argued these principles would be chosen unanimously from an original position behind a veil of ignorance, where people do not know their abilities or social status, ensuring a fair outcome.

Uploaded by

Aditi Singh
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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John Rawls was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition.

His theory of justice as


fairness describes a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an
egalitarian economic system. His theory of political liberalism explores the legitimate use of political
power in a democracy, and envisions how civic unity might endure despite the diversity of
worldviews that free institutions allow.

In order to understand and accept Rawls’ principles of Justice, he divided his book into various
sections in the following order:...

Outline of the scope for the principles of Justice

Rawls argues his principles applied to a society that has been understood as a scheme of social
cooperation where we can advance each other’s good. We live together, impose burdens on each
other and create benefits: Thus, we need principles to rightly allocate these burdens and benefits.
This raises a question as to who chooses these principles of justice?

This leads us to Rawls second fundamental idea of basic structure.

Basic structure of a well-ordered Society

By stating that a political society is well ordered conveys three things:

 Idea of public conception of justice.

Knowledge is mutually recognised. A society in which everyone accepts, and knows that everyone
else accepts the very same political conception of Justice.

 Idea of effective regulation by a public conception of justice.

Basic structures in the society such as political and social institutions and the way they hang
together as one unit of corporation.

 Idea of effective regulation by the society

Citizens have a normally effective sense of justice that enables them to understand and apply the
publicly recognised principles of justice.

According to Rawls, the well ordered society chooses the principles of justice unanimously. For a
public conception of justice offers a mutually recognised outlook from which the citizens can
adjudicate their claims of political right.

-----------------------Point 3--------------

How do we implement these principles?

Original position

At this point Rawls theory gets the most original, he explains how we are very different from one
another, due to different ideas and ways of lives, different talents and skill, for we come from
different backgrounds. Moreover, we are extremely interested in maximizing our own good. But if
we were to choose principles of Justice under the influence of these facts, we would end up
choosing principles that would systematically advantage our position even if it is at the expense of
others. Rawls gives two reasons as to why this would be wrong. First, we would obtain those
advantages on the basis of social and natural contingencies. For example, if we know that we have a
high earning power, we will choose a tax system solely on the basis that it advantages us. According
to Rawls this is something deeply wrong for we all are moral equals, and such contingencies are
aspects of brute law; a reason why we know nothing about our position and it’s conditions in the
original position.

Secondly, we are autonomous agents and we have the capacity to frame, revise and pursue a
conception of good life. And what should matter to us is that we should be able to implement
whatever conception of the good we happen to have. Yet if we were to know what our conception
of good is, when choosing principles of Justice we would focus on those rights and freedoms which
are necessary to us, costing the rights and freedoms which are necessary to others.

To ensure that primary goods are distributed in such a way that nullifies the impact of a bad laws in
our lives, and enable us to implement whatever conception of good we have, we must put ourselves
in a hypothetical situation and imagine how we would allocate primary goods if we did not know
who we are, where we come from etc to simply state, we are to stand behind a veil of ignorance.
This contractual situation is called the original position: it is a position of equality since natural and
social ladies between us.

In this sense, the principles we choose are a product of a fair agreement which is why Rawls theory
of justice is called justice as fairness.

The principles that are chosen in the original position according to Rawls are:

1. The liberty principle: each individual has a right to enjoy basic liberties, consistent with a
similar and equal right of others.
2. The second principle: social and economic inequalities are permitted provided they benefit
the worst of members of the society, and that they attach to positions and offices open to
all.

The two principles of Justice

Now having discussed how according to Rawls the choice for these two principles of justice is made
and by whom we shall examine the two principles.

The first principle of Justice

The first principle of justice also known as the liberty principle, each individual has a right to enjoy
basic liberties, consistent with a similar and equal right for others. The liberty principle captures the
essential rights and freedoms of a liberal society. According to Rawls, it also leads to the idea of state
neutrality between different conceptions of the good. That is, the state must let people pursue their
ends and not discriminate against some of these hands or actively encourage them on the grounds
that some ends are more worthy than others. For example, the state must not have an established
church since it would privilege one particular religion over another. Even though this idea of state
neutrality sounds appealing it does raise the following issues. First, if it is pursued fully, it is in fact
quite radical. Taking in account the contemporary legal system which only allows marriage between
a man and a woman is discriminatory to homosexuals, and deliberately so: the idea is that a sexual
partnership between a man and woman is more worthy of legal protection, then a partnership
between two men or two women. The Rawlsian ideas could not condone that.

Moreover, the idea of state neutrality raises the question of distribution. It is one thing to say that all
members of the society should be allowed to live by their religious beliefs (as guaranteed by the
liberty principle) and that the state should not privilege one religion over another. But suppose that
one religious group needs extra funding because of its minority which fails to generate resources it
needs to maintain its churches or temples. Rawls theory of justice could not explain this.

The second principle of Justice

The second principle of Justice comprises two parts: equal opportunities and allocation of material
resources. That is, social and economic inequalities are permitted provided that:

a. They benefit the worst members of society and


b. They attach to positions and offices open to all.

The first part of the second principle is known as the difference principle, and the second part is
known as the equal opportunity principle.

Relationship between two principles of justice

According to Rawls, the liberty principle has priority: first, we ensure that liberties are secured and
then we implement the difference principle. To ensure that, liberty can be restricted only for the
sake of liberty and not for the sake of material equality.

Equal opportunities

As mentioned, the second principle of justice has two parts. The second part is about the equality of
opportunity on the job market: it says that people should not be discriminated against, when they
apply for jobs on arbitrary grounds such as race and gender.

The difference principle: distributing to the worst-off

The first part of the second principle of justice, says that income and build or two be distributed
equally, unless inequalities would benefit the worst of members of society. This theory holds a
radical ground by stating that in effect, equality is the default position and that inequality stands in
need of justification.

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