Distributive Justice

DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE: RAWLS 1 & WALZER

Society has benefits (community, security, legal/political institutions) and burdens (limits on our freedom, obligations via rights, taxes)

• Distributive Justice: a theory of how benefits and burdens ought to be distributed across society
• the state distributes benefits and via its power administers burdens

RAWLS: Justice as Fairness

• original position: agreement on certain principles if we are under the veil of ignorance and blind to any pre-existing social relations
• these chosen principles will be the principles of social distribution, or, justice
• fair equality of opportunity

so two primary ideas:

• original position: removing bias in how we arrange society
• difference principle: benefiting the least advantaged

Principles:

1. equal rights, as many rights and freedoms as are compatable with them being equal (so no hate speech, etc.)
2. social benefits should be to the greatest advantage to the least advantaged (DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE); attatched to offices/positions fair and accessible to all

LIBERALISM & MULTICULTURALISM: RAWLS 2 & KYMLICKA

Nation state: a national identity overpowering past cultural or religious identities

• your life is structured around a nation state

Rawls:

• earlier rawls wanted a comprehensive doctrine
• later embraced pluralism (the fact of freedom of thought)
• so under veil of ignorance we can accept the same fundamental conditions of justice
• but are morally free to choose whatever doctrine we want

Kymlicka:

• Rawls is hyper-individual in supposing individual views of X and Y
• culture, as a block, is often more important for one’s values
• historicity is cultural, not individual; and our individualism is a product of our CULTURAL heritage
• ignoring cultures that don’t have firmly liberal values is dangerous, as these cultures make up the individuality of the individuals participating within them
• however, sometimes we must restrict certain groups’ HIGHLY anti-liberal tendencies
• assimilation of immigrants (not refugees) is quite fair

3 forms of rights (to uphold cultural pluralism):

1. self-government rights
2. polyethnic rights
3. special representation rights

• so the solution to proper multiculturalism is anti-discrimination laws, allowing certain cultures exemptions from certain laws, public funding, an open arena for these groups to express their desires…
• but these exemptions are only up to a point, a society cannot allow anti-blasphemy laws for example, etc.
• complete cultural neutrality undermines cultural diversity, cultures are different and need to be accommodated differently