John Rawls Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

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John RawlsJustice as Fairness A Restatement
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Four Roles for Political Philosophy

• Practical role focus on deeply disputed
  questions and to see whether despite appearances,
  some underlying basis of philosophical and moral
  agreement can be uncovered. (2)
• Individual Society may contribute to how
  people think of their political institutions as a
  whole, and their basic aims and purposes as a
  society within a history (2)
• Reconciliation may try to calm our frustration
  and rage against our societyby showing us the
  way in which its institutions, when properly
  understood from a philosophical point of view,
  are rational, (3)
• Utopian probing the limits of practicable
  possibilities (4)

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Egalitarian Theory Marx

• To each according to his need and from each
  according to his ability.

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Entitlement Theory Nozick

• A person who acquires a holding in accordance
  with the principle of justice in acquisition is
  entitled to that holding.
• A person who acquires a holding in accordance
  with the principle of just transfer, from someone
  else is entitled to the holding.
• No one is entitled to a holding except by
  (repeated) applications of 1 and 2.
• Nozick does recognize that at times holding are
  not acquired justly. As a consequence, he does
  address how to rectify injustices. That will not
  concern us today.
• Wilt Chamberlain, Lebron James, Michael Jordan,
  Mia Hamm, Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie

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Principles of Justice

• Each citizen is guaranteed a fully adequate
  scheme of basic liberties, which is compatible
  with the same scheme of liberties for all others
  
• Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two
  conditions
• All offices and positions must be open to all
  under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
  
• Economic inequalities are only permitted insofar
  as they are to the greatest benefit of the least
  well off members of society.

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Difference principle

• All social values/goodsliberty and opportunity,
  income and wealth and the bases of
  self-respectare to be distributed equally unless
  an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these
  values is to everyones advantage. ?

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Distribution We have to assume, for the sake of
the thought experiment, that people require a
well-being level of 5 to meet their basic needs,
i.e., that people have enough to live a fully
human life.
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Fact of Reasonable Pluralism

• The fact of reasonable pluralism is not an
  unfortunate condition of human life, as we might
  say of pluralism as such, allowing for doctrines
  that are not only irrational but mad and
  aggressive. In framing a political conception of
  justice so it can gain an overlapping consensus,
  we are not bending it to existing unreason, but
  to the fact of reasonable pluralism, itself the
  outcome of the free exercise of free human reason
  under conditions of liberty. (Rawls 1993, 144.)

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Public Justification

• Consensus regarding premises is necessary
• Premises agreed to by free and equal citizens
• No coercion is present
• Public justification is not, then, simply valid
  argument from given premises (though of course it
  is that). (27)

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Well-ordered Society

• Public conception of justice everyone accepts,
  and knows that everyone else accepts, the very
  same political conception.(8)
• Basic structure refers to main political and
  social institutions and how they hang together.
  (8)
• Citizens all have a normally effective sense of
  justice.

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Original Position A Device for Representation

• Fair conditions
• Free and equal citizens
• Social contract (no coercion)
• Acceptable restrictions
• Constraints are reasonable
• Priority of the right
• Veil of ignorance
• Limit knowledge of general facts and conditions
• Remove differences in bargaining advantage

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Reflective Equilibrium

• Sense of justice and moral intuitions
• Reason
• Imagination
• Judgment
• Reflective equilibrium
• Internal contradictions in our judgments??
• Incompatible with the judgments of others??
• Avoiding dogmatic self-righteousness??

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Principles of Justice

• Each citizen is guaranteed a fully adequate
  scheme of basic liberties, which is compatible
  with the same scheme of liberties for all others
  
• Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two
  conditions
• All offices and positions must be open to all
  under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
  
• Economic inequalities are only permitted insofar
  as they are to the greatest benefit of the least
  well off members of society.

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Difference principle

• All social values/goodsliberty and opportunity,
  income and wealth and the bases of
  self-respectare to be distributed equally unless
  an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these
  values is to everyones advantage. ?

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Equality?

• Equality not necessary for justice (but it seems
  to be a default position).
• Inequality is unjust unless it is necessary for
  improving the condition of the least advantaged.