Rawls was 50 y.o. writing his first book (his magnum opus (?)) - A Theory of Justice
His latter writing does not significantly change his two principles of justice:
- The Liberty Principle
- The Social Equality Principle
What he did change is the philosophical justification of his principle. In 1999 he writes The Law of Peoples, which is his international theory (global justice theory), a rather thin book, 40 pages of which (of the already thin book) are dedicated purely to liberalism, a significant chunk of the book also being purely descriptive.
Today we focus on A Theory of Justice, where he explains the two principles (which never change). Next week will be the changes to the philosophical justification of the project presented in Political Liberalism.
Overlapping consensus and public reason are only tackled in Liberalism, so they will be tackled next week.
According to prof., Rawls is shit at writing and is difficult to read. Professor recommends a paperback edition by Political Liberalism, which has a really well-written introduction, where he was assisted word-by-word by another professor.
In Lectures on Moral Philosophy Rawls lies out his disagreements with other famous philosophers (Kant, etc.).
His intellectual enemy is utilitarianism. In hindsight, what Rawls defends is a liberal theory of justice which asks us to organize society in such a way that the least advantaged in society have the best position possible. The second intellectual enemy is libertarianism, but it was fleshed out as a response to Rawls, so it does not feature prominently in his own work.
Creating a permanent underclass, making them suffer, in favor of a significant uptick in QoL for everyone else would be an acceptable conclusion in utilitarianism (so long as the latter is greater).
“5 * 5 is 25”
Rawls says, “[u]tilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons,” he sees utilitarianism as the perspective taken on by an impartial sympathetic spectator.
Utilitarianism has no human rights built in; as a liberal, Rawls will want to solve that.
Nozick starts with a similar premise to Rawls, the first lines of Anarchy, State and Utopia, is “individuals have rights, and there are things nobody can do to them without violating their rights.” Both Nozick and Rawls are anti-utilitarian.
Nozick writes his book after Rawls, which is the point where their distinction can be clearly seen; the rights of an individual extend to the extent necessary for ‘free and equal persons’ in Rawls, and go further (to the point of making taxation theft) in Nozick.
Bottom line is: Rawls critiques utilitarianism.
The Two Principles & General Premises
There is a lot of Rawlsian stuff needed to explain first (premises):
Justice as Fairness is the theory of justice Rawls likes [namedrop!]; there are many theories of justice, Rawls calls his ‘Justice as Fairness.’
A Theory of Justice asks how the state should operate, how institutions should co-operate. The first virtue, acc. Rawls, is justice, not efficiency or anything else.
”Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.”
The principles he outlines are not applicable to personal connections (not family, etc.). These are principles for the Basic Structure [BS, lol], social institutions.
The BS is the arrangement of the major political and social institutions of a liberal society. Economy, property, political constitution, legal system, the familial institution (mechanism of society to bring about future citizens, marriage, divorce, etc.).
The BS is intended to distribute the benefits and burdens of social life.
He asks people - “what is the right society to have?”
Society makes people do certain things to each other, through which they distribute benefits and burdens. Our social togetherness brings burdens and brings benefits. Burdens means, if there’s a rule that there’s inheritance tax, that could be a burden for an individual; imagine prof. De Schutter has a $20mln villa, that he wants to give someone at the end of his life - should the state want to tax that, that would be a burden for him. Similar case for traffic laws.
It also brings benefits, however - together we realize things that would not be possible alone. So, he wonders how these things can be fairly distributed.
Metaphor: if society bakes a cake on a daily basis, and sells it, it gets some amount of money; people are burdened for this, someone has to buy the ingredients, put in the work, etc. Rawls tries to see how we can fairly distribute the burdens of and the benefits for the contribution of an individual to this cake.
Rawls is not bothered or motivated by the fact of disparity in IQ, health, etc. The state does not distribute those, so it’s not the state’s problem; if someone cannot contribute to the cake-making process (say, severe disability), he doesn’t have a clear principle for how to deal with them - he says it’s kinda not his point.
The basic structure is inherently coercive, and incredibly coercive. Because it is so impactful, it must be justified publicly. You will be forced to work with them - leaving society is not a realistic option - so it has to be justified.
He works with the assumption of a closed society; people enter by birth and leave by death. (e/im)migrants are not dealt with, because he doesn’t want to give the state the option to just say “if you don’t like it, fuck off.”
He also assumes a monolingual society; Kymlicka will take up the project of adopting Rawls for Canada. It is thus not interesting to ask what Rawls would say about Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Canada, etc. - it’s just not what he deals with.
Concept vs. conception of justice. Everyone has a concept of justice; Justice as Fairness, on the other hand, is a conception of justice; so is Marxism, utilitarianism, etc.
Rawls is an ideal theorist; in addition to monolingualism and closed society, he assumes favorable social conditions and compliance with the chosen principles.
So, societies that are not plagued with massive hunger problems; he writes as an american citizen in the late 20th century, so a relatively prosperous and non-scarce society.
He also assumes that people will comply with the principles they choose. No real theory of prisons, or restitution principles; this is surely to be dealt with, but that is non-ideal theory and he chooses not to deal with it himself.
He formulates the justice principles not as a result of the distribution, but as procedural conditions; procedural justice is reached if the distribution results from just procedures.
Rawls believes that a just society will distribute things through the basic structure; these things will be primary social goods, things that everybody wants. This is only relevant for socially distributed goods, these do not apply to personal, private exchanges.
Natural goods such as health and intelligence are not distributed through the basic structure; luck egalitarians are the ones that argue for this.
When speaking of concept vs. conception of justice, is this just the notion of well-ordered society vs. comprehensive view?
Is Rawls’ theory necessarily centralized? When contrasted with the theories of Hayek, Castoriadis, or Bordiga, would Rawls simply claim that the issues they address are fundamentally different?
Rawls is interested in the distribution of the following primary social goods:
a) basic rights and freedoms
b) opportunities
c) power (possibility to run for office)
d)
e) self-respect
The 2 principles of justice:
- Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all;
- Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:
- They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
- They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle)
They are prioritized as 1 > 2, 2.1 > 2.2
; 2.1 is Fair Equality of Opportunity; 2.2 is the Difference Principle
He seems to claim that one may trade away some of their liberties in exchange for a corresponding increase in QoL.
”Distinctions based on gender and race are of this kind. Thus if men, say, have greater basic rights or greater opportunities than women, these inequalities can be justified only if they are to the advantage of women and acceptable from their point of view. Similarly for unequal basic rights and opportunities founded on race (Theory, §16: 85).” (p.65)
“We hope that in a well-ordered society under favorable conditions, with the equal basic liberties and fair equality of opportunity secured, gender and race would not specify relevant points of view.”
How does he tackle the problem of secession? The right to free association seems to allow organization into groups; does he think a state could possibly disallow secession? How then, can he guarantee that under reasonable pluralism a given domestic context will not segregate/atomize itself. Perhaps this is ignorant, but I have a vague notion that Nagel argues for an exclusively domestic difference principle based on participation in a Rousseau-style general will formed through a social contract signed by members of a society.
Aren’t there places where even if fairly represented in the original position, inherent inequality in number in real society would result in a distinction in true conditions stemming from something like the logic of collective action?
Does a greater natural endowment come with a corresponding increase in social burden? He does seem to refer to the fact that “the fact of the difference in distribution of native endowments is a ‘common asset’” How does he see allocation of the commons? [Should I read Elinor Ostrom?] Michael Sandel
I can’t seem to find it in the text, but I believe Rawls recognizes that a set of just rules (as the nominally just rules of exchange in capitalism) does not necessarily lead to a just distribution; particularly, he sees this to be the case in the transition from one generation to the next. ‘background procedural justice.’ Wouldn’t there necessarily be a difference in how children will be raised between a more and less successful family, even if their education and opportunities are the same? Reductively speaking, children raised by hippies and children raised by corporate ladder climbers are going to have a very different mindset regarding work and motivation.
Rawls thinks that trading off basic liberties for material prosperity is invalid; you cannot trade-off the first principle for the second.
If we are to have an economic system, the system must lead to most of the resources flowing to the least advantaged. Maximin heuristic.
To him, it is a right of the least advantaged to be helped. There is no cut-off point once everyone is well-off enough.
Inequalities are only ok if they benefit the least advantaged. he is also not a luck egalitarian, he does not call for redistribution
The Veil of Ignorance (VoI) (discussed @ end) & Original Position (OP)
The difference principle is only relating to the difference principle (2.2), it comes after 1 and 2.1, everyone with equal talent and ability should be able to get to an equal position in life.