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VALUES SHOULD BE ASSESSED BY “JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS” Part 2
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VALUES SHOULD BE ASSESSED BY “JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS” Part 21. JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS IS A BE1TER CRITERION THAN UTILITARIAN PRINCIPLES John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 30. Justice as fairness is a deontological theory in the second way. For it is assumed that the persons in the original position would choose a principle of equal liberty and restrict economic and social inequalities to those in everyone’s interests, there is no reason to think that just institutions will maximize the good. (Here I suppose with utilitarianism that the good is defined as the satisfaction of rational desire). Of course, it is not impossible that the most good is produced but it would be coincidence. 2. JUSTNESS OF SOCIETAL STRUCTURE MOST IMPORTANT John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 351. When the basic structure of society is reasonably just, as estimated by what the current state of things allows, we are to recognize unjust laws a binding provided that they do not exceed certain limits of injustice. In trying to discern these limits we approach the deeper problem of political duty and obligation. The difficulty here lies in part in the fact that there is a conflict of principles in these cases. Some principles counsel compliance while others direct us the other way. Thus the claims of political duty and obligation must be balanced by a conception of the appropriate priorities.
John Rawls, Professor-Harvard, A THEORY OF JUSTICE, 1971, p. 61. The second principle applies in the first approximation, to the distribution of income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility, or chains of command. While the distribution of wealth and income need not be equal, it must be to everyone’s advantage, and at the same time, positions of authority and offices of command must be accessible to all. One applies the second principle by holding positions open, and then, subject to this constraint, arranges social and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits.
Introduction Few American philosophers have had the public political impact of John Rawls. A Harvard philosopher concerned with questions of distribution and participation, Rawls has influenced politicians as well as academics ever since the 1971 publication of his treatise A Theory of Justice . That work provided the foundation for long-held “liberal” welfare statism, the view that the government has a responsibility founded in both morality and practicality to take care of the poor. The work questioned long-held assumptions that the poor were poor due to some fault of their own, and vindicated the previous decade’s “War on Poverty” by raising the possibility that, indeed, any one of us could be poor. In fact, Rawls’ “veil of ignorance,” wherein we ought to choose public policies and social philosophies as if we had no idea of our particular stations in life, has served to question many deeply held prejudices regarding economic marginalization, discrimination, educational elitism, and public morality. It is safe to say that no twentieth century American philosopher save John Dewey has had the kind of impact John Rawls has had. In this essay I shall examine Rawls’ two major works: A Theory of Justice and Rawls’ 1993 sequel, Political Liberalism. Rawls modified his views considerably between the first book and the second, and it is important to note exactly how his philosophy changed. But the main thrust of this essay is that, as a liberal welfare statist, Rawls is really an idealist, markedly ignorant of the material antecedents of poverty and oppression. Because of this ignorance, Rawls’ works are at best unrealizable ideas, and at worst prescriptions for a kind of elitist reformism which obscures these causes of poverty and oppression, and risks undermining the potential for genuine social change. This essay, therefore, is less a flat-out rejection of Rawlsian justice, and more a lamentation that such ideas are considered before and without considering those genuine structural changes, which absolutely must take place before we can live in the kind of world we might wish to create from behind a genuine (and fair) veil of ignorance. In essence, my argument is: Good idea, impossible to implement in a world of capitalism, elitism, discrimination, and ideological hegemony. Rawls’ Theory of JusticeRawls’ initial theory provides both a normative view of the desirable world and the criteria to justify the kinds of decisions that will result in such a world. Rawls’ normative vision in A Theory of Justice is clearly one where there are not huge differences, and huge tensions, between the haves and the have-nots. The reason these inequalities should not exist is, essentially, that people do not deserve their economic fate in the same way that they deserve other kinds of rewards and punishments. Rawls believes that people are poor as a matter of fortune, not choice. In order to prove this, and to provide a test through which we can come to the conclusion that a welfare system would be desirable, Rawls posits a hypothetical “veil of ignorance,” in an “original position.” Rawls argues that if a group of us were sitting around deciding how society should be planned out, and if we had no awareness of where we, as individuals, would end up in such a society, we would agree on two basic principles: that there be equality of opportunity and rights; and that whatever inequalities actually existed ought not to disadvantage the poor too much. These two principles form the core of Rawls’ initial theory: “The first principle guarantees the right of each person to have the most extensive basic liberty compatible with the liberty of others. The second principle states that social and economic positions are to be (a) to everyone's advantage and (b) open to all. A key problem for Rawls is to show how such principles would be universally adopted, and here the work borders on general ethical issues. He introduces a theoretical ‘veil of ignorance’ in which all the ‘players’ in the social game would be placed in a situation which is called the "original position." Having only a general knowledge about the facts of ‘life and society,’ each player is to make a ‘rationally prudential choice’ concerning the kind of social institution they would enter into contract with. By denying the players any specific information about themselves it forces them to adopt a generalized point of view that bears a strong resemblance to the moral point of view. ‘Moral conclusions can be reached without abandoning the prudential standpoint and positing a moral outlook merely by pursuing one's own prudential reasoning under certain procedural bargaining and knowledge constraints’” (http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Forum/meta/background/Rawls.html). One ought to immediately notice that the basis of Rawlsian society and Rawlsian social justice is intellectual, not moral or emotional. Rawls is arguing that we would rationally (and, probably, through our own self-interest) choose a society where the poor would be provided for, since none of the people in the original position know where they will end up. For two decades after the publication of A Theory of Justice, philosophers debated the merits of the Rawlsian formula. Although there were some disagreements about the feasibility of such a formula, and people sometimes objected to the rationalistic (rather than moral) basis of the formula, philosophers generally agreed that Rawls had made a powerful case for a social system that did not let the poor slip through the cracks. Eventually, however, Rawls would modify his theory, because he felt that it was a little too absolutist. In place of maxims requiring adherence to two principles, Rawls’ later work would emphasize pluralism and cooperation. He would come to believe that there was a more important question than distributive justice; namely, how diverse people with differing beliefs could co-exist in a pluralist society. 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