John Rawls’s Theory of Justice

John Rawls’ theory of justice attempts to explain why clear social inequalities are unjust and what a just society really is. As we can see, Rawls’ theory of justice as he developed in his seminal work A Theory of Justice is both a work of ethics and politics. Hence, we can glean from Rawls’ theory of justice some kind of an ethical theory. For one, in his A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempted to address the problem of distributive justice. In what follows, these notes will briefly sketch the key concepts of Rawls’ theory of justice.

Some Basic Principles of Rawls’ Theory of Justice

Rawls believes that a just society is one whose characteristics conform to normative rules that everyone would agree. This explains why Rawls’ theory of justice begins by introducing the fundamental principle that every individual is inviolable. Rawls writes: “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of the state cannot override. Therefore, the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interest.” From this fundamental principle, we can draw the following implications.

First, for Rawls, life should not be sacrificed for the sake of the majority. For example, suppressing the people’s right to speech and expression for the sake of economic growth is morally wrong for Rawls. As we can see, Rawls’ theory of justice directly attacks consequentialist ethics, especially its most notable representative, that is, utilitarianism.

Second, it would appear that for Rawls, an erroneous theory is tolerable in the absence of a good one. Thus, as Rawls would have us believe, an unjust law is better than no law at all. In other words, an act of injustice is tolerable if and only if it is necessary to avoid greater act of injustice. For example, it might be morally right to incapacitate, if not kill, a notorious serial killer if it is the only way to stop him from killing more innocent people.

And third, individual liberties should be restricted in order to maintain equality of opportunity. For Rawls, restrictions through law preserves freedom in democracy. For example, it is probably morally right to restrict people from owning more than 5 hectares of agricultural lot so that other people will have the chance to own a lot.

With this, we can now come up with two basic principles of justice that Rawls introduced in his seminal work A Theory of Justice. These two principles of justice are expressions of what Rawls calls “justice as fairness”.

The first principle puts emphasis on equal access to the basic human needs, rights, and liberties. Rawls calls this the equal liberty principle. This principle guarantees the right of each person to have the extensive basic liberty compatible with the liberty of others. Some examples of this right are the right to life, the right to vote, the right to speech, and the right to peaceable assembly.

The second principle emphasizes the idea of fair equality of opportunity and the equal distribution of socio-economic inequalities. Rawls calls this the difference principle. This principle implies that social and economic positions are to be to a) everyone’s advantage and b) open to all.

But how can such principles be universally adopted? Or how can we actualize Rawls’ theory of justice?

It is here where Rawls’ notions of the “Veil of Ignorance” and the “Original Position” come in.

Rawls introduces the theoretical “veil of ignorance” in which all players in the social game would be placed in a hypothetical situation called the “original position”. Rawls suggests that in the original position, each individual does not know her sex, race, natural abilities, social status, economic conditions, and the like. In other words, in the original position, individuals hide their identity behind the “veil of ignorance”. Just like in Husserl’s epoche or phenomenological reduction, the individual in the original position sets aside her biases towards and preconceptions about anything.

According to Rawls, out of this veil of ignorance, each individual makes a rational prudential choice concerning the kind of social institution they would enter into contract with. As we can see, Rawls appears to be a moral contractarian and his theory of justice is in itself a kind of social contract. Rawls recommends that individuals in the veil of ignorance ought to adopt a generalized point of view that bears strong resemblance to a moral point of view. And according to Rawls, if everybody in the original position promotes equality then “justice as fairness” is attained. If inequality is upheld, then injustice prevails.

As we can see, justice as fairness is achieved through the notions of the original position and the veil of ignorance. In the original position, individuals agree on specific social rules and institutions and in the veil of ignorance, individuals choose the basic structure of society that they thought is just. This is possible because Rawls argues that selfish but rational people who are detached from their concrete identity and context will freely choose to create a society that is truly just. In fact, Rawls believes that through the veil of ignorance, individuals can identify universal beliefs about how society should be organized.