Rawls: Justice as Fairness
- Human justice is inherently a social construct.
- Individual justice is basically just vengeance
- Concepts of social justice
- Plato: the Republic and philosopher-kings
- Hobbes: benevolent monarchy
- Locke: social contract
- Kant and the categorical imperative—eliminate need for social justice (interestingly, very similar to Sartre’s second axiom)
- Marx : revolution of the proletariat
- Dewey: Pragmatism, progressivism, democracy—major reification through education, empiricism
- Rorty: culture of global empathy
- Rawls: social contract but unlike Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, et al.
Original position/veil of ignorance “…no one knows his place in society, his class 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.” (Rawls, A Theory of Justice) This scenario is Rawls’s substitute for the “state of nature” used by many other social contractarians
collectively decided principles for adjudicating conflicts in society
NOT striving for a homogeneous society mandated on a priori principles.
Before 19th century, idea that govt should not be promoting explicit social views was rare.
American exceptionalism?
- Liberty Principle
- Democratic rights
- Freedoms of conscience, association, expression
- Personal property right
“each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties”[
- Second Principle
- Fair equality of opportunity
- Difference principle: it only permits inequalities that work to the advantage of the worst-off.
Method of regulating conflicts in a heterogeneous society. Not divinely based or sentimentally driven; not based on any a priori principles except that participants agree to respect the results of their own decisions.