Rawls Criticisms Flashcards
Pogge
Rawls should be interpreted as radical for decreasing global inequality, dislikes Rawls’ later moves away from this
Sen
Rawls too focused on institutions, individuals are important for justice too
Abstract theorising about an ideal society does nothing to remediate immediate injustices
Different citizens have different abilities to turn primary goods into a meaningful pursuit of a good life
Geuss
Distorting effect of ideology exacerbated:
“More likely to reinforce the power of these entrenched prejudices because it will explicitly present them as universal”
Friedman
Can never fully abstract ourselves from our fallible psychology, so we should seek to understand the prejudices that do exist in order to counteract them
Nagel
Veil obscures something that is not morally irrelevant - conception of the good
Builds in a substantive liberal individualist bias to who he places behind the veil
Sandel
Some ends are inseparable from our identity
Hare
Reflective equilibrium allows us to “rig” principles of justice to fit our intuitions
Harsanyi
People in OP would pick utilitarianism due to expected value theory BUT assumes commensurable scale of good lives
Dworkin
Interprets that the normative work is not conferred by the contract, but by illustrating the idea of equal respect in the design of political institutions
Criticises that the difference principle is insensitive to to choices, gives his auction idea for resource egalitarianism, inequality is also justified by choices (also Kekes)
Pateman
Sexual Contract describes social contract that entrenches subordinate relations in the workplace and in marriage.
“the dichotomy between the public and the private … is, ultimately, what feminism is all about”
Kittay
“A justice which does not incorporate … care is incomplete, and a social order which ignores care will itself fail to be just”, care work “made invisible in the public domain”
Mills
Justice is not served by ignoring past injustice and discrimination
Proposes a reformulation of VOI wherein contractors choose between societies with a history of racial injustice, giving a prudential reason to support institions in redressing these injustices - “An ideally just state is unattainable since that would be a state with no past history of unjustice”, solution to be found in “non-ideal moral theory”
Reflective Equilibrium could answer his critique
Young
Rawls doesn’t focus on the primary subject of politics is in the relationships between people, instead too focused on distribution and so is not radical enough
Also, “the particularities of context and affiliation cannot and should not be removed from moral reasoning” - “being fair does not require stepping out of one’s own skin”
Daniels
Health should be included as a prerequisite of fair equality of opportunity
Cohen
Difference principle could justify huge inequality, allowing incentive payments encourages people to be self-serving and demand unnecessarily high incentives, situation of worst-off would be made even better than under the difference principle if people didn’t need payments to be altruistic
