John Rawls

1
John Rawls

• Justice As Fairness

2
Rawls

• How would you distribute packets of food in
  Japanese internment camp?
• Kant?
• Utilitarians?
• Rawls?

3
Rawls

• Aristotle Kant
• Natural Law Rawls
• Utilitarians

4
Rawls as Kantian

• Humans are morally equal
• Humans are free, responsible
• People can make rational, impartial judgments
• One can derive moral principles that applicable
  to all

5
Rawls

• Not consequentialist
• Not virtue-based
• Not empirical

6
Rawls

• Two types of justice
• Retributive legal punishments
• Distributive political, social, economic
• While Rawls considers the former, in discussing
  his theory, we are focusing primarily on the
  latter.

7
Rawls

• Fundamental question that Rawls seeks to address
  is how the benefits and burdens of society should
  be distributed among its members
• Alternatives?

8
Rawls

• Shaped by an egalitarian vision, human solidarity
• Situation of relative scarcity

9
Rawls

• Fundamental concept is that justice is fairness
• Fairness is impartial
• Fairness is to social/political/economic
  structure as truth is to scientific theory

10
Justice as Fairness

• Fairness is a concept that is generally agreed
  upon by reflective people in a free society
• Fairness assumes that people are self-interested

11
Principles of Rawls Theory

• Principles regulate primary goods
• Basic rights and liberties
• Opportunities
• Powers and offices
• Income and wealth
• Later included some additional goods, such as
  leisure

12
Principles of Rawls Theory

• Principle 1 that basic rights and liberties be
  distributed equally and at the highest possible
  level, i.e. each person has most extensive
  liberties possible with everyone else having same
  liberties

13
Principles of Rawls Theory

• Principle 2 social and economic inequalities
  are to be distributed such that
• A. they are attached to powers and offices
  open to all under conditions of (fair) equality
  of opportunity
• B. unequal distributions of income and wealth
  and of other primary goods are to work to the
  advantage of the least well off

14
Principles of Rawls Theory

• How do self-interested, rational persons reach
  a disinterested rational position from which to
  structure a society to promote justice?
• The Original Position

15
Rawls Original Position

• The Veil of Ignorance
• Positions in society, class
• Talents and abilities
• Age, sex
• Psychological dispositions
• Own conceptions of the good

16
Rawls Original Position

• From this position a person can reach an
  impartial outcome
• The point is to take away arbitrary things
  that people not choose, things for which they
  should not be penalized or held responsible.

17
Rawls

• Because of this emphasis on the freedom to choose
  and respect for the consequences of choices is
  called a liberal theory

18
Rawls

• Back to the camp
• How would rational people choose to divide the
  packets of food in a Rawlsian calculus? 1400
  people and 1500 packets. Maximin

19
Rawls Justice as Fairness

• Back to the camp
• What difference if the American Red Cross agreed
  to increase the number of packets by 400 if the
  200 Americans received 2 a piece?