Rawls

John Rawls (1921-2002)

Life

• Early life
  • Born in Baltimore
  • Second of 5 children
  • Father was an attorney, mother involved in the League of Women Voters
  • Two of his brothers died of illness he passed to them
  • Attended Episcopalian prep school, then Kent School in CT
  • Entered Princeton and earned his bachelor’s degree in 1943
  • Became more interested in theology, had an idea of preaching
  • He enlisted in the army later that year and served in the South Pacific until 1945
  • Part of the occupying army and became disillusioned after seeing the aftermath of the bomb
  • Became an atheist after the war
  • Returned to Princeton in 1946 and earned a Ph.D. in moral philosophy in 1950
• Career
  • He taught at Princeton (1950–52)
  • Cornell (1953–59)
  • MIT (1960–62)
  • Harvard where he was appointed until 1979, teaching philosophy for 40 years
  • Spoke out against the draft, critic of the Vietnam War

Philosophy

Theory of Justice (1971)

• Liberalism
  • More freedom, but it leads to more inequality
  • Rawls wanted to embrace liberalism without defying these two principles
• Justice
  • Justice as fairness
  • Basic freedom for all as fairness
  • Access to politics
  • We live in a more plural society and therefore must focus on the similar perspective
  • The only way for this cooperation in a plural society to occur is through civility
• Freedom and equality
  • Freedom principle must agree with the equality principle
  • Difference principle (Maxmin Principle): any unequal distribution of wealth and income be such that those who are worst off are better off than they would be with any distribution consistent with principle 1
  • Some inequality is necessary to maintain high levels of productivity
  • Equal opportunity: People should have the same starting position
• Original position
  • Countries have equality before law, but not everyone has the same original position:
  • Individual abilities and talents
  • Personality: focus and determination
  • Appearance
  • Political preferences
  • Social class
  • Family
  • Education
  • Country
  • Sex
  • Ethnicity
  • Sexuality
  • Religion
  • Region
  • Should be agreed upon through an initial situation that is fair
  • Adequate account of justice cannot be derived from utilitarianism
  • it is inconsistent with intuitively undesirable forms of government in which the greater benefit of the majority is at the expense of the interests of the minority
  • Revies notion of social contract, arguing justice consists of the basic principles of government that free and rational individuals would agree to in a hypothetical situation of perfect equality
  • Imagines the original position: people blind to their social, economic, historical circumstances and their abilities: “veil of ignorance”
  • This group would be led by reason and self-interest to agree:
  • Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others
  • Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both a) to the greatest benefit of the lest advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
  • Basic liberty: freedom of thought and conscience, of association, representative government, to form and join political parties, personal property, and the rights and liberties necessary to secure the rule of law
  • Economic rights and liberties, freedom of contract or the right to own the means of production, are not among his basic liberties
  • They cannot be infringed upon even if it increases the aggregate welfare, economic efficiency, or economic position of the poor
  • Second clause insists that all should have fair and equal opportunity to compete for desirable public or private offices and positions
  • Society must provide all with the basic means necessary to be competitive (education and health care)
• Political liberalism (1993)
  • Challenge to legitimacy:
  • How can it be legitimate to coerce all citizens to follow one law, given tey hold different worldviews
  • Challenge of stability:
  • Why would a citizen willingly obey a law that is imposed on him by a collective body whose members have beliefs and values so so different from his own
  • Mutual agreeable rules can be found without coercion, because there is tolerance despite differences in worldviews
  • No comprehensive doctrine can be accepted by all reasonable citizens, nor does it consider it the basis of coercive power
  • Society’s fundamental culture: rights, government, history of court rulings can create a sense of justice
  • Society should be a system of cooperation
• Law of People’s
  • Principles for ordering the basic international structure of institutions
  • People are free and independent
  • Observe treaties and their undertakings
  • equal in all parties to the arguments that bind them
  • Non-intervention only human rights
  • Right to self defense and not to instigate war
  • Honor human rights
  • specified conditions in war
  • Allow people to live in dignity
  • There are liberal peoples and decent peoples
  • Liberal peoples: have liberal intuitions, governments for the people. No desire for expansion or domination in land, religion, economy
  • Decent peoples: do not embody plurality of the population or respect all equality, but has a core list of rights and can cooperate internationally. Decent hierarchical societies have the fundamental interests of the whole in mind through hierarchy
• Government
  • Liberal democratic welfare state
  • Society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantages
  • better than if people lived by their own efforts
  • Priority of liberty:
  • A less extensive liberty must strengthen the total system of liberty
  • priority
  • Inequality of opportunity must enhance the opportunity of those with lesser opportunity
  • excessive rate of saving must on balance lessen the burden of those bearing this hardship
• Welfare state
  • Influenced by Rawls’ work
  • Provides healthcare, education, security, a minimum standard of living
  • Min standard seen as creating quality of opportunity and foster a sense of solidarity
  • Prevents civil unrest
  • Popularized after 1945
  • Otto von Bismarck is considered the father of the welfare state, very conservative but a realpolitiker for appeasement and fend off social democratic party
  • He implemented socialist polices to prevent socialist take over: introduced health insurance, pension
• Economy
  • Incompatible with most basic liberties and does not provide fair and equal opportunity
  • capitalism tends to produce an unjust distribution of wealth and income
  • Property-owning democracy is his ideal form of a just society: ownership of the means of production is is widely distributed and those who are worse off can be economically independent
  • Avoided discussing the specific political arrangements
  • Work interpretated as philosophical foundation for egalitarian liberalism as imperfectly manifested in capitalist welfare state

Impact

• Academics
  • Revived some faith in democracy
  • Symbol of democracy
  • Famous idea of the original position
• Social
  • Tiananmen Square students had read his book and brought it to the protest
  • “Hidden influence”: did not have a public person and may not have always been cited by later politicians (Obamacare)
• Governments
  • Influential on the legal field
  • Theories of justice
• Welfare
  • Most western countries are welfare states
  • Little resistance in Europe
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