John Rawls Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

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John RawlsJustice as Fairness A Restatement
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Organizing Idea(s)

• Fair system of cooperation
• Well-ordered society
• Basic structure
• Original position
• Citizens as free and equal

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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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Fundamental Question

• What is the most acceptable political conception
  for specifying the fair terms of cooperation
  between citizens regarded as fair and equal and
  as both reasonable and rational, and (we add) as
  normal and fully cooperating members of society
  over a complete life, from one generation to the
  next? (7-8)

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Political Conception of Justice

• Comprehensive moral doctrine attachments that
  are religious, philosophical or moral in a strict
  sense.
• Political conception of justice Should
  accommodate reasonable and compatible
  comprehensive moral doctrines.

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Five Facts

• Reasonable Pluralism is a permanent feature of
  democratic society.
• Comprehensive doctrine can only be maintained by
  force.
• Political stability requires that a majority of
  the politically active citizens endorse
  principles of justice
• Political culture is working reasonably well.
• Finding agreement is difficult.

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Burdens of Judgment

• The evidenceempirical and scientificbearing on
  the case may be conflicting and complex, and thus
  hard to assess and evaluate. (35)
• Even when we agree fully about the kinds of
  considerations that are relevant, we may disagree
  about their weight, and so arrive at different
  judgments. (35)
• To some degree all our concepts are vague and
  subject to hard cases. (35)
• The way we assess evidence and weigh our moral
  and political values is shapedby our total
  experience. (35)

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Reasonable and Common Sense

• Reasonable are ready to propose, or to
  acknowledge when proposed by others, the
  principles needed to specify what can be seen by
  all as fair terms of cooperation. (7)
• Reasonable discussion (Rawls 1989 pp. 477-478)
• First, the political discussion aims to reach
  reasonable agreement, and hence so far as it is
  possible it should be conducted to serve that
  aim.
• Second, when we are reasonable we are prepared to
  find substantive and even intractable
  disagreements on basic questions.
• Third, when we are reasonable, we are ready to
  enter discussion crediting others with a certain
  good faith.

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Rational

• Rationality rationality relates to our capacity
  to develop a conception of the good. But,
  unreasonable does not imply irrational.
• Bargaining position
• Prisoners dilemma

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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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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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Fair System of Cooperation

• Well-ordered society a society effectively
  regulated by a public conception of justice.(5)
• Not a community ? not unified by comprehensive
  moral view
• Not an association ? not entered into freely
• Citizen (those engaged in cooperation) as free
  and equal persons. (5)
• Sense of justice
• Capacity to formulate a conception of the good

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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.