Rawls Flashcards
What is Rawl’s theory of justice?
Thequestion of justice is difficult to decide.
● Justice should always be based on plural groundings meaning justice can be sought on various grounds. Further,
without a plural grounding there is a possibility of emergence of a dominant ground of justice which might cause
injustice to people seeking justice under other grounds.
● Rawlsdefined the idea of justice as fairness or demand of fairness.
● Rawls gave his social contract theory where according to him, to form a social contract where justice is a demand
of fairness those who are forming such social contract must be under primordial equality and in this original
position they should be under the veil of ignorance. Essentially meaning that they don’t know what their interests
are and are ignorant of that. Had they known their interests they wouldn’t have mutually come to form a social
contract which forms a society.
Rawlsian reasonable idea of Justice is based on two basic principles:
Each person has an equal right to fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberty which is compatible with a
similar scheme of liberty for all. Eg: Art 14
b. Social and economic inequality are to satisfy two conditions:
They must be attached to offices and positions open to all under the condition of fair equality of
opportunity.
They must be of the greatest benefit to the least advantaged member of the society. Eg: Art 17
Socio economic inequality is permissible only if it is attached to offices that are open to all and are of benefit to the least well of in society.
What is the relationship between the first and second principle?
The first principle needs to be fulfilled in order to apply the specifics of the second principle.
In the second principle he essentially argues that, to make the worse off people better off, some basic ‘primary
goods’ must be ensured. Those being rights, liberties, income and wealth and social basis for self respect.
Therefore, the second principle is based on distributive equity of rearranging resources in a manner to give more
to the least advantaged.
Can all injustice be removed?
No– we cannot perceive all forms of injustices at one point of time
and therefore, what is expected from our generation is that we will all remove the perceived injustices for our
generation. Previously, climate justice was not an issue– question of justice is malleable– what was the question
of justice in 19th century may not be the same in 21st century
