Rawls' Theory of Justice: an Analysis
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Hume's Theory of Justice*
RMM Vol. 5, 2014, 47–63 Special Topic: Can the Social Contract Be Signed by an Invisible Hand? http://www.rmm-journal.de/ Horacio Spector Hume’s Theory of Justice* Abstract: Hume developed an original and revolutionary theoretical paradigm for explaining the spontaneous emergence of the classic conventions of justice—stable possession, trans- ference of property by consent, and the obligation to fulfill promises. In a scenario of scarce external resources, Hume’s central idea is that the development of the rules of jus- tice responds to a sense of common interest that progressively tames the destructiveness of natural self-love and expands the action of natural moral sentiments. By handling conceptual tools that anticipated game theory for centuries, Hume was able to break with rationalism, the natural law school, and Hobbes’s contractarianism. Unlike natu- ral moral sentiments, the sense of justice is valuable and reaches full strength within a general plan or system of actions. However, unlike game theory, Hume does not assume that people have transparent access to the their own motivations and the inner structure of the social world. In contrast, he blends ideas such as cognitive delusion, learning by experience and coordination to construct a theory that still deserves careful discussion, even though it resists classification under contemporary headings. Keywords: Hume, justice, property, fictionalism, convention, contractarianism. 1. Introduction In the Treatise (Hume 1978; in the following cited as T followed by page num- bers) and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (Hume 1983; cited as E followed by page numbers)1 Hume discusses the morality of justice by using a revolutionary method that displays the foundation of justice in social utility and the progression of mankind. -
John Rawls' Theory of Justice As Fairness
ANDREAS FOLLESDAL 20121025 John Rawls' Theory of Justice as Fairness Approximately as appears in Guttorm Floistad, ed. Philosophy of Justice, Contemporary Philosophy, Springer 2014, 311-328 When do citizens have a moral duty to obey the government and support the institutions of society?1 This question is central to political philosophy. One of the 20 century's main response was John Rawls' theory of justice, "Justice as fairness", in the book A Theory of Justice, published 1971. The book Justice as Fairness was an improved and shorter presentation of Rawls' theory, published 2001 with editorial support by Erin Kelly, one of his former students. When asked how rights, duties, benefits and burdens should be distributed, the ideals of freedom and equality often conflict with each other. In domestic politics we often see such conflicts between calls for more individual freedoms and schemes for universal, egalitarian welfare arrangements. It is such conflict between liberty and equality that Rawls attempts to reconcile with his theory of justice. There are three main steps in Rawls' theory of justice. He assumes certain features characteristic of free societies, as well as some specific ideas about how society and people should be understood. Rawls believes that even people with different beliefs can agree with some principles to resolve basic conflicts over the distributional effects of social institutions. Secondly, he draws on the contract theory tradition in political philosophy, arguing that consent in some sense is necessary for the legitimate exercise of state power. Based on the requirement of consent, in a third step Rawls presents certain principles for a just society that citizens should be expected to support. -
Rawls' Theroy of Justice
RAWLS' THEORY OF JUSTICE ThomAS M. SCANLON, JR.t Rawls' book is a comprehensive and systematic presentation of a particular ideal of social life. The aim of the book is to analyze this ideal in a way that allows us to see clearly how it differs from prominent alternatives and on what grounds it may be preferred to them. In carrying out this analysis Rawls presents and draws upon not only a theory of distributive justice and a theory of political rights, but also a theory of value, a theory of obligation and a theory of moral psychology. Contemporary political philosophy has already been altered by Rawls' book, but the leading ideas of his theory are in a number of respects familiar ones. They are familiar within the philosophical community since they have been set forth by Rawls in a series of important and influential articles over the course of the last fifteen years.' Rawls has altered and clarified important points in his argu- ment since these articles first appeared, and the book presents a large amount of new material, but the main thrust of Rawls' theory can be seen in these shorter works. The idea of Rawls' book will also seem familiar to many who have not read his articles, for the ideal of social life he describes is one that lies at the heart of liberal political theory, and the principles and policies which this ideal supports are, in general, ones that liberals have traditionally supported. Finally, the central analytical device in Rawls' argument is a variant of the familiar idea of a social contract. -
The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism Author(S): Michael Walzer Reviewed Work(S): Source: Political Theory, Vol
The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism Author(s): Michael Walzer Reviewed work(s): Source: Political Theory, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 6-23 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191477 . Accessed: 24/08/2012 12:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Theory. http://www.jstor.org THE COMMUNITARIAN CRITIQUE OF LIBERALISM MICHAEL WALZER Institutefor A dvanced Study 1. Intellectualfashions are notoriously short-lived, very much like fashions in popularmusic, art, or dress.But thereare certainfashions that seem regularlyto reappear. Like pleated trousers or short skirts, they are inconstant featuresof a largerand more steadily prevailing phenomenon - in this case, a certainway of dressing. They have brief but recurrent lives; we knowtheir transienceand excepttheir return. Needless to say,there is no afterlifein whichtrousers will be permanentlypleated or skirtsforever short. Recur- renceis all. Althoughit operatesat a muchhigher level (an infinitelyhigher level?) of culturalsignificance, the communitarian critique of liberalismis likethe pleatingof trousers:transient but certainto return.It is a consistently intermittentfeature of liberalpolitics and social organization.No liberal successwill make it permanently unattractive. -
The Principle of Solidarity : a Restatement of John Rawls' Law Of
DISSERTATION: THE PRINCIPLE OF SOLIDARITY: A RESTATEMENT OF JOHN RAWLS´ LAW OF PEOPLES ZUR ERLANGUNG DES AKADEMISCHEN GRADES DOCTOR PHILOSOPHIAE (DR. PHIL) VON MILICA TRIFUNOVIĆ EINGEREICHT IM DEZEMBER 2011. AN DER PHILOSOPHISCHEN FAKULTÄT I DER HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN PRÄSIDENT DER HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITÄT ZU BERLIN: PROF. DR. JAN-HENDRIK OLBERTZ DEKAN: PROF. MICHAEL SEADLE GUTACHTER: 1. PROF. DR. VOLKER GERHARDT 2. PROF. DR. WULF KELLERWESSEL TAG DER MÜNDLICHEN PRÜFUNG: 20. JUNI 2012. 1 CONTENT CHAPTER ONE.............................................................................................................................................5 Instead of Introduction: Global Justice Debate- Conceptions and Misconceptions........................................5 1. Global Justice Debate – Conceptions and Misconceptions............................................................5 1.1. CONCEPTUAL ANALYSES....................................................................................................6 1.1.1. Aristotelian Paradigm................................................................................................7 1.1.2. Rawlsian Paradigm ...................................................................................................9 1.1.3. Aristotelian and Rawlsian Paradigm in A Global Context .......................................13 1.2. METHODOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ...........................................................................................21 1.2.1. Political Constructivism in a Global Context............................................................22 -
Aristotle, Kant, JS Mill and Rawls Raphael Cohen-Almagor
1 On the Philosophical Foundations of Medical Ethics: Aristotle, Kant, JS Mill and Rawls Raphael Cohen-Almagor Ethics, Medicine and Public Health (Available online 22 November 2017). Abstract This article aims to trace back some of the theoretical foundations of medical ethics that stem from the philosophies of Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill and John Rawls. The four philosophers had in mind rational and autonomous human beings who are able to decide their destiny, who pave for themselves the path for their own happiness. It is argued that their philosophies have influenced the field of medical ethics as they crafted some very important principles of the field. I discuss the concept of autonomy according to Kant and JS Mill, Kant’s concepts of dignity, benevolence and beneficence, Mill’s Harm Principle (nonmaleficence), the concept of justice according to Aristotle, Mill and Rawls, and Aristotle’s concept of responsibility. Key words: Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, autonomy, beneficence, benevolence, dignity, justice, nonmaleficence, responsibility, John Rawls Introduction What are the philosophical foundations of medical ethics? The term ethics is derived from Greek. ἦθος: Noun meaning 'character' or 'disposition'. It is used in Aristotle to denote those aspects of one's character that, through appropriate moral training, develop into virtues. ἦθος is related to the adjective ἠθικός denoting someone or something that relates to disposition, e.g., a philosophical study on character.[1] 2 Ethics is concerned with what is good for individuals and society. It involves developing, systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behaviour. The Hippocratic Oath (c. -
Korsgaard.John Rawls's Theory of the Good
John Rawls’s Theory of the Good Christine M. Korsgaard I. Introduction In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls works out a theory of the good, with a view to establishing three conclusions important to his theory of justice. The first is that his chosen unit of distribution, primary goods, are indeed good, and good in the way he defines them to be— they are things that citizens have reason to want no matter what else they want. The second is that it is good-for a person to be a just person, at least if the person lives in a well-ordered society, one that is effectively regulated by a publicly accepted conception of justice.1 Importantly, Rawls, like Plato before him, aims to show, not that being a just person promotes our interests independently defined, but that being a just person is good as an end, a good thing to be for its own sake. And the third is that a just society in Rawls’s sense is also a good society for its citizens to live in—again, not because it promotes our given aims, but for its own sake. Those last two claims—that a just society is good-for its citizens and that it is good to be a just person if you live in one, are needed in order to establish what Rawls call “congruence,” the harmony of the right and the good.2 That in turn is necessary to show that a society under Rawls’s conception of justice would be, as he calls it “stable”: that is, it would generate its own support, in the sense that those who lived under the Rawlsian system of justice would find reason 1 I have hyphenated good-for (and bad-for) since one of the issues treated in this essay will be the distinctness of, the relations between, the idea of “good” and the idea of “good-for.” 2 Rawls, A Theory of Justice. -
Moral Theories Course Leader
PHIL 101: Conceptual Foundations of Bioethics: Moral Theories Course Leader: Stavroula Tsinorema Semester: 1st (7 ECTS) Course Type: Required Objectives: The aims of this course unit are (a) to bring students in contact with the theoretical basis of Bioethics, through training in the methodologies and analytical tools of moral reasoning, (b) to provide them with the basic categories which show the conceptual links between the frameworks of moral philosophy and normative bioethical reasoning, (c) to equip them with the appropriate theoretical frameworks in order to be able to investigate critically and, where possible, to resolve specific moral problems deriving in biomedical research, its application in clinical contexts, health care and environmental policy. The overall aim is to enable students to develop core skills for the conduct of normative analysis and reasoning in Bioethics. Content: The normative resources for moral argument and justification in Bioethics are found in moral philosophy and philosophical theories of ethics. This course unit will survey some of the principle philosophical approaches in addressing a number of bioethical controversies and bring appropriate perspectives from ethical theories to bear on case studies in Bioethics. Topics include: 1) Philosophical ethics and its relation to Bioethics. 2) Classical approaches. Ethics and metaphysics. Ontological approaches to ethics. 3) Modern classical approaches to ethics. Theories of Scottish Enlightenment. Moral sentiments and the ethics of work: David Hume and Adam Smith. 4) Immanuel Kant: The ethics of form. 5) Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism. 6) Contemporary moral theories: - Contractarian and constructivist theories. John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Onora O’ Neill Postgraduate Prospectus 17 - Virtue ethics, ethics of care, feminism, communitarianism 7) Theories of a deflatory kind and moral scepticism. -
Explain and Assess Rawls' Theory of Justice
Explain and assess Rawls’ theory of justice by Christopher Evans I shall seek to place John Rawls’ theory of justice in the context of contract theory, where Rawls places it, and other theories with which he contrasts it. I shall consider key arguments for and against his approach. I shall focus primarily on distributive justice, though his theory also applies to issues of liberty and governance such as tolerance and intolerance1. I shall argue that Rawls’ approach provides a persuasive method of evaluating political propositions, even though the nature and priority of his proposed values (“primary goods”) and principles of justice can be challenged. Rawls’ aims, approach and context In A Theory of Justice, Rawls describes justice as “the first virtue of social institutions”, and as a matter of “fairness”. He sets out his aim for a theory building on the social contract idea, as a viable alternative to classical utilitarian and intuitionist conceptions of justice2. In seeking an alternative to utilitarianism, Rawls argues against what he regards as the prevailing dominant theory3. He comments that in the utilitarian view of justice “it does not matter, except indirectly, how [the] sum of satisfactions is distributed among individuals”4. In other words, “utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.”5 In this respect, one could say that it pays insufficient regard either to liberty or equality. On intuitionism, defined by Rawls as “the doctrine that there is an irreducible family of first principles which have to be weighed against one another by asking ourselves which….is the most just”6, Rawls himself occasionally appeals to intuition to support his arguments - referring for instance to “our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice”7. -
Intercollegiate Political Philosophy Lectures
This handout can be downloaded at www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctyvmd/Handout.pdf Intercollegiate Political Philosophy Lectures Looking Again at Rawls’s Theory of Justice Room 421, Birkbeck Main Building Thursdays 11-12, Weeks 1-5, Autumn Term 2004-2005 Véronique Munoz-Dardé Department of Philosophy, UCL E-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 These lectures will be devoted to Justice as Fairness, Rawls’s conception of justice, as developed in the revised edition of A Theory of Justice (1999, hereafter, in all handouts, TJ) and Justice as Fairness a Restatement (2001, hereafter JFR). The purpose of these lectures is to come to an understanding of the fundamental ideas of Rawls’s approach, and how they fit together: the Original Position, Reflective Equilibrium, the Basic Structure, the Difference Principle, Reasonable Overlapping Consensus, the difference between Political Liberalism and Comprehensive Liberalism, etc… We will do this by going back and forth between TJ and the mature statement of the theory in JFR. In Rawls’s own words in the preface of JFR: In this work I have two aims. One is to rectify the more serious faults in A Theory of Justice that have obscured the main ideas of justice as fairness, as I called the conception of justice presented in that book. Since I still have confidence in those ideas and think the more important difficulties can be met, I have undertaken this reformulation. […] The other aim is to connect into one unified statement the conception of justice presented in Theory and the main ideas in my essays beginning with 1974. -
Is John Rawls' Difference Principle Just Another Form of Supply Side
Economics and Jurisprudence: Is John Rawls’ difference principle just another form of supply side economics and can it be applied effectively in modern society? Darya Kraynaya Abstract The article discusses the possibility of supply side economics as an extension or recreation of John Rawls’ difference principle. One of the key arguments of the difference principle is to permit economic disparity in a society as long as the least advantaged are benefitted in the best way possible. Through scrutinising the differences, similarities and results of applying each of these two theories, the author submits that the two cannot possibly be one and the same as on application vast disparity is revealed. The article makes this argument by highlighting examples of the application of a supply side economic theory in American history. Special attention is given to the United States as some economists have tried to use Rawls’ reasoning behind the difference principle to justify the gap between the top 1% and the rest of the population. I. Introduction At first, it may appear that John Rawls’ difference principle and the theory of economics are fairly similar, so much so that one could be said to be just one form of the other. Despite the fact that in recent years, particularly in the United States, some economists have tried to justify the growing gap between the rich and the poor by using the difference principle, on application, and once analysed in depth, these theories are rather different. To question whether these two ideas really have resemblance, this essay will take the reader on a journey, first addressing the basics of the difference principle and its criticisms, and then turning to the basic claims of supply-side economics and how they have been criticised. -
Quong-Left-Libertarianism.Pdf
The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 19, Number 1, 2011, pp. 64–89 Symposium: Ownership and Self-ownership Left-Libertarianism: Rawlsian Not Luck Egalitarian Jonathan Quong Politics, University of Manchester HAT should a theory of justice look like? Any successful answer to this Wquestion must find a way of incorporating and reconciling two moral ideas. The first is a particular conception of individual freedom: because we are agents with plans and projects, we should be accorded a sphere of liberty to protect us from being used as mere means for others’ ends. The second moral idea is that of equality: we are moral equals and as such justice requires either that we receive equal shares of something—of whatever it is that should be used as the metric of distributive justice—or else requires that unequal distributions can be justified in a manner that is consistent with the moral equality of persons. These twin ideas—liberty and equality—are things which no sound conception of justice can properly ignore. Thus, like most political philosophers, I take it as given that the correct conception of justice will be some form of liberal egalitarianism. A deep and difficult challenge for all liberal egalitarians is to determine how the twin values of freedom and equality can be reconciled within a single theory of distributive justice. Of the many attempts to achieve this reconciliation, left-libertarianism is one of the most attractive and compelling. By combining the libertarian commitment to full (or nearly full) self-ownership with an egalitarian principle for the ownership of natural resources, left- libertarians offer an account of justice that appears firmly committed both to individual liberty, and to an egalitarian view of how opportunities or advantages must be distributed.