Rawls Quiz

The Two Principles Of Justice

FIRST PRINCIPLE: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with an equal system of liberty for all. The basic liberties are, roughly speaking: Political liberty (the right to vote and run for office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold personal property; freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. "a fair system of cooperation over time, from one generation to the next"

6) rights and liberties covered by the rule of law How does Rawls get this list?

He says that it can be drawn up by considering "which liberties are essential social conditions for the adequate development and full exercise of the two powers of moral personality over a complete life." (PL 293)

Rawls offers his notion of justice as fairness as an illustration of a political conception of justice. In its mature form (PL 291), this notion affirms the following principles:

I. Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all, II. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

The VI prevents the parties from choosing principles of justice that will advance their own particular (class, etc.) interests, because they do not know what those interests are. In other words, it ensures

IMPARTIALITY: no one's interests can be privileged over anyone else's. And the parties do not know what those interests are because they do not know who they are. All that they know is that they want to obtain the largest share of primary goods possible. Note that the VI creates a situation in which each party, by trying to advance her own interests, must simultaneously advance the interest of every member of society (precisely because she could be any member of society). The VI has another moral point. Consider the distribution of rights and liberties. All the things that the parties do not know about themselves (gender, ethnicity, social class) are illegitimate reasons for giving people different rights (i.e., giving some more or fewer rights than others).

Okay, but how could this ever work. We know who we are. How could we ever step behind the VI and forget what is in our own (actual) interest?

It's easy. In fact, arguably, every time you think about what is good for everyone in society without singling yourself out for any special consideration, you are thinking behind the VI.

the main idea of a theory of justice

My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalizes from the familiar theory of the SOCIAL CONTRACT.

One way to look at the idea of the original position, therefore, is to see it as an expository device which

sums up the meaning of these conditions and helps us to extract their consequences. On the other hand, this conception is also an intuitive notion that suggests its own elaboration, so that led on by it we are drawn to define more clearly the standpoint from which we can best interpret moral relationships. We need a conception that enables us to envision our objective from afar: the intuitive notion of the original posi- tion is to do this for us.

the scope of the inquiry is limited

1) doesn't apply to all cases 2) well-ordered society 3) basic structure is somewhat vague 4) considers strict compliance

a conception of social justice

Provides a standard whereby the distributive aspects of the basic structure of society are to be assessed.

Rawls imagines persons - the parties - coming together in the original position to choose principles of justice to regulate the background structure of society.

The background structure is simply society's main social and political institutions.

justice as fairness

The basic structure of society: the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation.

I assume that eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted.

This state of affairs I refer to as reflective equilibrium. It is an equilibrium because at last our principles and judgments coincide; and it is reflective since we know to what principles our judgments conform and the premises of their deriva- tion.

this fails for saving

Since the persons in the original position know that they are contemporaries (taking the present time of entry interpretation), they can favor their generation by refusing to make any sacrifices at all for their successors; they simply acknowledge the principle that no one has a duty to save for posterity. Previous generations have saved or they have not; there is nothing the parties can now do to affect that. So in this instance the veil of ignorance fails to secure the desired result. Therefore, to handle the question of justice between generations, I modify the moti- vation assumption and add a further constraint. With these adjust- ments, no generation is able to formulate principles especially designed to advance its own cause and some significant limits on savings principles can be derived. Whatever a person's temporal position, each is forced to choose for all.

major social institutions

THE LEGAL PROTECTION OF FREEDOM OF THOUGHT AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE COMPETITIVE MARKETS PRIVATE PROPERTY IN THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION THE MONOGAMOUS FAMILY

Okay, but what is the point of all of this?

The OP, the parties, the VI, are all simply a kind of argument, the point of which is to convince us that Rawls's principles of justice are fair (just as the point of more traditional social contract theories employing the idea of a state of nature and so on were designed to convince us that a certain form of government was just). If we think the way the OP is set up is a good model of how fair principles of distributive justice could be chosen, then the principles of justice the parties choose will be fair (and Rawls will have demonstrated the fairness of his principle of justice).

What is the purpose of the veil of ignorance (VI)?

The VI ensures that the principles of distributive justice chosen will be fair or just.

these principles rule out justifying institutions on the grounds that the hardships of some are offset by a greater good in the aggregate

The intuitive idea is that since everyone's well-being depends upon a scheme of cooperation without which no one could have a satis- factory life, the division of advantages should be such as to draw forth the willing cooperation of everyone taking part in it, including those less well situated.

social justice

The intuitive notion here is that this structure contains various social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of life determined, in part, by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances. In this way the institutions of society favor certain starting places over others. These are especially deep inequalities. Not only are they pervasive, but they affect men's initial chances in life; yet they cannot possibly be justified by an appeal to the notions of merit or desert. It is these inequalities, presumably inevitable in the basic structure of any society, to which the principles of social justice must in the first instance apply. These principles, then, regulate the choice of a political constitution and the main elements of the economic and social system. The justice of a social scheme depends essentially on how fundamental rights and duties are assigned and on the economic opportunities and social conditions in the various sectors of society.

the original position

The original position corresponds to the state of nature in traditional social contract theory. The original position is not thought of as an actual historical event. It is a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to justify a certain conception of justice.

The parties must choose principles for the distribution of primary goods subject to the following conditions.

The parties are "equally situated": Each party has one vote and each party's vote counts equally. They vote for principles of distributive justice (principles regulating the distribution of primary goods). Any principles selected must be approved unanimously (a little reflection should make clear that the way the OP is set up, any choice will be unanimous). • The parties must choose behind a veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance prevents the parties from knowing certain things about themselves. No party knows his or her: o Place in society o Class position or social status o Wealth, income o Gender o Race, ethnicity o Religion o Intelligence o Talents, abilities This list is not exhaustive, and can be added to.

the veil of ignorance as defined in the readings

This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvan- taged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances. Since all are similarly situated and no one is able to design principles to favor his particular condition, the principles of justice are the result of a fair agreement or bargain. For given the circumstances of the original position, the symmetry of every- one's relations to each other, this initial situation is fair between individu- als as moral persons, that is, as rational beings with their own ends and capable, I shall assume, of a sense of justice. The original position is, one might say, the appropriate initial status quo, and thus the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair. This explains the propriety of the name "justice as fairness": it conveys the idea that the principles of justice are agreed to in an initial situation that is fair. The name does not mean that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, any more than the phrase "poetry as metaphor" means that the concepts of poetry and meta- phor are the same.

Rawls argues that the parties in the OP would choose, as a principle of justice regulating the distribution of the primary good of basic rights and liberties, an equal division.

This is Rawls First principle of distributive justice: everyone is to have equal rights and liberties

"the parties"

Those who are present in the OP and are to choose the principles of justice to regulate the basic structure of society. The parties are "equally situated," which means that they all have an equal vote which they can use to approve or reject a principles of justice.

An important concept for Rawls is the concept of a comprehensive doctrine or view. These include moral philosophies like utilitarianism and philosophical systems such as Kantianism

Utilitarianism...: the principle of utility . . . is usually said to hold for all kinds of subjects ranging from the conduct of individuals to the organization of society as a whole as well as to the law of peoples. the idea of a political conception of justice that he develops is contrasted with comprehensive doctrines. A comprehensive doctrine may include a political conception of justice but a political conception of justice falls far short of addressing questions of interest to the comprehensive doctrine. Thus, a political conception may address whether we are to respect freedom of speech and assembly for other comprehensive doctrines than our own, but it will not address the question of precisely how we should conduct ourselves so as to secure our happiness or eternal salvation. A political conception conceives of persons as having the two moral powers mentioned above, as being responsible for their actions, etc., but does not address whether persons are immortal souls or immaterial substances as, say, Plato and most medieval Christian theologians held. SO: a political conception of justice has 1) a basic structure 2) is a freestanding view 3) assumes reasonable citizens

The parties are not real persons (just as the OP is not a real place): They are hypothetical persons.

We are to imagine that the parties want to win for themselves the largest share of primary goods possible (this is not an entirely accurate characterization, as we will see later, but for the moment this will suffice).

social contract conception of justice

We are to imagine that those who engage in social cooperation choose together, in one joint act, the principles which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits.

Their freedom consists in their possession of the two moral powers

a sense of justice a conception of the good

injustice, then, is simply

inequalities that are not to the benefit of all

the principle should go in order, thus:

infringements of the basic equal liberties protected by the first principle cannot be justified, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages.

Rawls argues for a specific conception of distributive justice, which he calls

justice as fairness

He argues for his principles of justice by employing a version of the

social contract doctrine

no limits on general info of the people in the OP... takes into account that they have basic ideas of what is good, understand principles of economic theory, etc

some say that's irrational and that you need to know all info, but this biases people same holds for coalitions

major institutions

the political constitution and the principal economic and social arrangements

The objective of the parties is to

to gain the largest share possible of PRIMARY GOODS FOR THEMSELVES (or for those they represent). -this is not egoistical; trying to get the most for yourself is trying to get the most for everyone because you don't know what you'll get!

The parties in the OP are concerned with choosing principles of justice to regulate the distribution of primary goods. Primary goods are of 3 kinds:

• Rights and liberties • Wealth and income • Social bases of self-respect

Primary Goods:

◦ 1. RIGHTS AND LIBERTIES, POWERS AND OPPORTUNITIES ◦ II. WEALTH AND INCOME ◦ III. SOCIAL BASES OF SELF-RESPECT