Political Philosophy
It seems Rawls writes Justice as Fairness in an opposite order to normal. Begins with later work and continues with earlier work.
Rawls is very important. Whatever you will do, even if you end up strongly disliking rawls he is an important figure in contemporary philosophy. You need to know what he says at least, and you need to be able to position yourself vis a vis him.
His first book is A theory of Justice basically his magnum opus which he writes at 50. Later Political liberalism appeared which changed the field of political philosophy quite a bit. However the changes do not concern the two principles of justice.
There are 2 famous principles of justice. Liberty principle and equality principle.
What changes is the underlying philosophical justification for the 2 principals, but he doesn’t change his mind on the substance of justice as such. At the very end of his life in 1999 he wrote the law of peoples which is composed of two parts. One of them is a comment on political liberalism and this is his international justice theory. He says that he doesn’t really have a theory of international relations, he justs sums up the status quo. However he has been enormously influential on domestic theory. Many have critiqued him for having such a meagre theory of international justice. Shouldn’t the things said about domestic levels be realised on a global level? Justice for the nation state is substantial for Rawls. And then there are some very thin principals on international relations, and the most important principle is ’do not attack another nation’, sovereignty needs to be respected. Rawls himself did not have much more to say on that. Many have said what should be realised for domestic societies should be realised for the entire world. Some have argued that this is not actually at all what we should argue given Rawls’ theory.
What needs to happen?
This week is on theory of justice. Next week is on political liberalism and the changes to his justification to his political project.
In 2001 he published Justice as fairness, which is a summary of his earlier work. It is his final theory. Rawls was not a good writer, he is boring to read and he is also difficult. It almost looks like a german translation to english. He actually had help to try to write more accessibly. If you want to read something wellwritten by rawls there is a paper-back introduction which has a really good introduction written by Rawls which is only 25 pages. There are also some books like Lecture on the history of political philosophy in which he discusses prior political theory.
From Scratch:
Rawls starts very young by detecting his intellectual enemy. The theory of justice that was prevalent at his time was utilitarianism. What he ends up defending is a liberal theory of justice, which asks us to organise society in such a way as those that are least advantaged have the best chance to get ahead. He is an antiutilitarian, but he is not really a proper libertarian either. For Rawls himself utilitarianism is the enemy because there wasn’t as good of a libertarian theory that he could respond to. Nozick’s book arguing that taxation is forced labour and theft is very much a libertarian alternative, and is a direct response to Rawls. Rawls responds to utilitarians, and Nozick to him.
He starts with the critique of utilitarianism that there is in util why the violation of the liberty of the few by the majority is okay in util. Util just calculates, and the other doesn’t matter. Rawls cannot accept this fact.
”This view of social cooperation is the consequence of extending to society the principle of choice for one man, and then, to make this extension work, conflating all persons into one through the imaginative acts of the impartial sympathetic spectator. Util does not take seriously the distinction between persons.”
Rawls as a liberal will want to have an alternative to this. Nozick stats with a similar premise as Rawls. Individuals have rights and there are things that no one can do to them without violating their rights. Rawls totally agrees. So both are equally anti-util. For Nozick these individual rights include also property rights and therefore taxation is wrong. Rawls believes these rights goes for freedom of speech, religious freedom, security of the person etc. but it does not extend to inheriting your parents’ money nor the money you make yourself. Rawls also has a substantial account of rights but there is more to his second principle.
2 steps to Rawls’ principles: Rawls is really famous for the argument for the two principles, the veil of ignorance. The original positions will always choose the two principles through the veil of ignorance. This is rawlseology.
His theory is known as Justice as Fairness.
Think of there being many theories of justice. Perhaps every person have different theores. His theory is justice as fairness. The first book starts with the sentence that justice is the first virtue of social institutions. By which Rawls aims to say that justice has priority over other things. If we think about how social institutions should work, like government in general, the most important virtue is always justice. Efficiency for example matters, but if it is injust we don’t want that efficiency.
Rawls formulates principles of justice for the basic structures of society. People often make a mistake when they apply the principles. The principles are not to be applied between me and my friends, or my children, or whatever in my personal life. It is for the basic structure of social institutions. We are going to structure society, and there are many, but we have to first look at the first building blocks. The constitution of the state and the legal system and the economy and the system of property and the family are all part of the basic structure. The family here means as a mechanism for society to bring about future citizens. Legal elements regarding marriage and divorce are part of the basic structure, but it is not about the day-to-day interactions.
What these things do is to distribute the main benefits and burdens of social life. Rawls wants to fundamentally ask people what the right society to have is. Every day people do certain things to each other in which they distribute benefits and burdens. This is what being together in a society means. Burdens means that if there is a rule on inheritance tax, that could be a kind of burden for me. But social life also brings benefits. Together we realise things that wouldn’t be possible if we were alone. He wants to think about how these benefits are fairly distributed.
It’s like we bake a cake on a daily basis as a society together. And then we sell it, and that gives us benefits, but it also comes with burdens in making the cake, and he wants us to present a fair system of distributing burdens and benefits. The dicussion should center around who we should give and allocate the benefits to. Rawls is all about distribution.
It shows why Rawls is not interested in making sure people are equally healthy, or that some poeple have a lower IQ than others, natural intelligence and health are not things that the state distributes. The primary goal of the state is not to check each person and their desires/needs, rather we all work together which gives us benefits, which need to be distributed properly. This shows why Rawls doesn’t have a principle for dealing with people who cannot cooperate, like those with a serious disability. Then Rawls say we should help these people for sure, but it is not something he is particularly interested in. He wants us to assume everyone contributes equally, and then we have to argue how distribution is actually done.
”The basic structure is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound and present from the start”. The basic structures are incredibly coercive, because if you don’t behave you can end up in prison, or paying taxes or whatever. The basic structure has the entire police behind it and so on. And we need to know what the principles are that should guide the basic structure. The arrangement of the basic structure requires justification because these institutions have such great impact, because they are coercively imposed, and because leaving the society is not a realistic option (and so consent is not a solution). You are going to have to be forced to work with whatever happens in society. In many ways the state will end burdening people differently, and this will determine how rich you end up being. Leaving shouldn’t be an option because not everyone will have the same means to just up and leave society.
Rawls says that ’i’ll work with the assumption of a closed society.’ People enter by birth and leave by death. He says this is not true because of things like immigration and emigration, but he is assuming it because he doesn’t want to allow for the answer that people can leave their nation. He also assumes a monolingual people. Rawls knows that there societies like Belgium where there is not one shared language, but he doesn’t thinks he can solve this kind of problem, so he wants to assume it away. It is a bit like in natural science where we assume certain starting points and then reach a certain conclusion given the facts that he does look at.
Kymlicka takes this as his key. Kymlicka is a rawlsian who thinks rawls is right on most things except Canada. So he wants to work out a rawlsian multicultural theory. It’s not really interesting to think about what Rawls would say about Switzerland, because he doesn’t want to work with it.
When it comes to gender he does say that there are multiple. But many people consider his answer on that topic a bit suboptimal – will get to later.
Concept of justice. All of us have a concept of justice. And then there is a conception of justice, a specific view. Justice as fairness is one conception of justice, same with marxism etc.
Rawls famously talks about ideal theory and nonideal theory. Rawls is an ideal theorist. And he has less to say about nonideal theory. Because Rawls assumes that people will generally comply with the chosen principels and favourable social conditions. So he assumes societies that are not plagued with massive hunger problems. He doesn’t have much to say about famines, because it is not part of what he wants to examine. Minimal non-ideal conditions should apply. There is no theories of prison and so on either, because these are non-ideal places.
’If my grandma had wheels she’d be a bicycle’.
In international there is a clear discussion on the non-ideal international relations, because there will be outlaw societies that do not respect human rights. You have to assume society is stable and that people comply with institutions.
Procedural justice: distribution must comes about through just procedures. So first you basically have to have the veil of ignorance which is a just procedure, and whatever comes out will basically be a just state of affairs. He focuses mainly on procedures of putting people in the right position to be able to do what is best for themselves and society.
A just society will distribute through the basic structure. The things it distributes are primary social goods. Primary means thing that everybody wants wherever they are or whoever they are: money, self-esteem. And they must be social because they are distributed through the basic structure of society. So only goods that are distributed from society. What is not distributed are natural goods like health or intellgience. Critics of Rawls have said we should distribute these goods too.
Luck-libertarians argue against this, because we need to make sure unlucky people are not unfairly treated because of that. We have to equalise luck.
Society should respect the social basis of self-esteem or dignity, which is also one of the most important for Rawls. Society should build schools and hospitals, because they are ways of distributing opportunities and ways to enjoy basic rights and freedoms. But only because they are a right way to reach self-esteem etc. Not because they distribute health or knowledge.
He says that there are 2 principles, and then there is a priority rule such that the first has priority over the second. The second principle which has two subprinciples has the structure that 2a is prior to 2b.
- ”Each person has the same indefeasible claim ot a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties of all”
These are basically the typical freedoms that we know, liberty of conscience, freedom of speech, freedom of association, political liberties to form parties and so on, rights and liberties that protect my integrity like private property is one solution, freedom of movement, freedom of occupation, rights and freedoms covered by the rule of law. These things can only be overturned by other basic liberties. You have to look at it case by case. Hate speech could conflict with integrity, whilst free speech is demanded of principle 1. By and large this is a set of freedoms that you need to respect, and when they clash you just have to look at the basic liberties of others. The freedom to drive without a belt is one you have, but it is not a basic freedom. We are interested in the basic liberties, and sometimes less important liberties have to be curtailed. Campaign financing and donations for political advertising is a freedom but is less important than others. So sometimes the fair value of organising in democracy is more important than being allowed to finance a party without end. These liberties help with two things. Citizens are to be rational and reasonable. Rational means that you must have the capacity to make plans and execute them. Reasonableness has to do with moderating what you say based on the reasonable requests by others. Imagine you have to divide a cake by you and your sibling, and your parents say you have to divide it and you take most; then your sibling can respond that ’they can see why it is rational for me, but it is unreasonable to distribute like this because I have a fair share for the cake’. Rationality has to do with the good, the things that I think are good like having a lot of money. But it is not reasonable for me to have infinite money because others have similar claims to me. What makes a liberty basic and therefore part of the first principle is that it is a necessary social condition to have these two moral powers. If a certain freedom is necessary for being reasonable it should be part of basic freedoms. It is necessary for me to be rational so you need to associate myself with likeminded individuals. And this is important because it gives me a chance to increase my moral capacities and so on. You need to understand that there are people with other conceptions of the good life, and so I should moderate my moral claims.
”By the priority of liberty I mean the preceence of the principle of equal liberty over the second principle of justice. The two principles are in lexical order, and therefoe the claims of liberty are to be satisfied first. Until this is achieved no other principles comes into play. As all the previous examples illustrate, the precedence of liberty means that liberty can be restricted only for the sake of liberty itself”. We cannot either curtail basic freedoms to bring about perfectionist values. Perfectionist values that are good for one conception of the good life, but bad for others. Curtailments of freedoms can only happen for the sake of liberty itself, not for other reasons.
- ”Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:
a. They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
This already has great redistributive effects. Rawls nuances because the welfare state allows for some to be ultrarich, so he isn’t really in favor of that. Many people read his argument as being in favour of a welfare state. And indeed there are many reasons to read that, but he is rather for property-owning democracy. There shouldn’t be one class that owns more than other. Assuming there is a distribution of natural assets, those who are at the same level of talent and ability, and have the same willingness to use them, should have the same prospects of success regardless of their intiial place in the social system. So positions must be open. There cannot be legal restrictions about who can get a job. No apartheid. And all groups must have equal education to be able to seek certain jobs. Nor can there be informal discrimination. Most importantly, there needs to be fair equality of opportunity. We need to correct for social disadvantages. Everyone with comparable talents and ambitions should have comparable life opportunities irrespective of social class. Assume that there are different social classes. The distribution of people in each job per class should be the same. Otherwise society is obviously not just. So if there are 4 classes, 25% of doctors should be from the poorest etc. Rawls doesn’t have a worked out theory of education and so on, but society needs it and society should be organised in such a way that this is fundamentally realised. Needed for the equal status of free and equal citizens: to be excluded form social positions on the basis of race/religion is a violation of the equal dignity of citizens. The greater amount of inequality would lead to a concentration of economic power in certain groups of society, but overall we should try to minimise the effects of this in society as much as possible.
b. They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle)
So this principle says that if we are going to have an economic system, we need one that leads to most of the resources flowing to the disadvantaged. Helping the least advantage is not charity but justice. Society is only just if it does this. It is a right of the least advantaged to always be helped. Secondly, there is no cut off point, this duty is always constant. Even if no one is poor anymore, we still have to continue to advantage the least advanataged. They must understand that their society is the best possible for the least advantaged. The principle is not about individuals, but fundamentally about social institutions. The difference principal is market-external, criterion to determine the distribution of income and wealth. The least advantaged are the economically least advantaged, so we don’t really look at disability or so on.
Rawls wants to use inequality but in such a way that the least advantaged are still the best off given that they are the least advantaged.
Rawls wants fair terms of social cooperation. So the question of distributive justice is what are the just principles to distribute the benefits between socially productive equal citizens, each of whom is prepared to contribute and cooperate fairly. In contrast to for instance luck egalitarianism.
Why you are in the column of the least advantaged for Rawls really doesn’t matter. The social class column is simply measured by your income and wealth, not by how you came to have that wealth.
Dworkin will argue that we should neutralise rude bad luck. That is the luck of being born in an unwealthy family, or the lack of luck that makes me born as wheelchair born. Therefore society should pay that wheelchair back. He thinks that the position of the column isn’t the only thing that counts but how you came there. If it was because you came there because you were lazy that’s your fault. But if you were born into that place, that’s really not your fault.
Original position.
Is an argument for the principles of justice of justice as fairness. Sates that the principles would be chosen by rational representatives of free and equal persons in an impartial initial situation. These parties know general facts about human nature and social institutions. But they don’t know particular facts about themselves or their societies. This is the veil of ignorance. It is a hypothetical thought experiment or a device of representation. Justice as fairness means that we put parties in an initial position and what comes about of that is just. What is just is defined by the outcome of the precude itself. No independent criterion.
We have to think of it like stepping out of society and designing it. What are then the best rules for a society? Should we go for the two principles? Yes. This is arrived at from an original position through which the parties doesn’t know that yet. In the original positions of the contracting parties, will think together about possible orderings of society. They’ll look at every political philosophy and come to the same conclusion; which is justice as fairness. He argus that the principles would be chosen by free and equal representatives in an equal situation. All we know in that situation are general facts about human nature. All we know is that there are wealthy and non-wealthy individuals. There is maybe a small library of all books that are not contested in science. Things that have received a lot of support by the scientific community. General principles from economics will be in there too, and basic facts of psychology or human nature. But you will not know anything specific from your world.
Then there is the device of representation. It is not like he believes that this can really happen. People cannot unthink themselves or their own traits. But we imagine, as individuals who are concretely historically situated, that there could be a situation in which we don’t know these things. Then what would we do?
Communitarians would say that this is impossible. Rawls means that it is a device of representing the parties there. People would choose his principles even if they didn’t know about them. That is because of a maxmin analysis. Tomorrow I may be born as the poorest member of society, and I want to organise society in such a way that everyone there has a rational reason to give a good deal for the least advantaged.