John Rawls

John Rawls was a prominent American political thinker of the contemporary era. Based on his ideological orientation, he is widely regarded as a modern liberal, a social liberal, and an egalitarian thinker. His contributions successfully revived the normative perspective within political theory. He passed away on November 27, 2002.

Key Contributions to Political Thought

• Methodological Innovation: Rawls earned a reputation as a leading figure in contemporary political thought by uniquely combining deontology with social contract methodology.
• The Difference Principle: His theory introduced the difference principle, which revolutionized how the State handles concepts of affirmative action and positive discrimination.

A Theory of Justice (1971)

In his landmark 1971 work, A Theory of Justice, Rawls built his framework upon the foundational principles of liberalism and the revived social contract tradition.

• The Virtue of Institutions: He established his premise with the statement, “Justice is the first virtue of social institution,” illustrating that a good society must be fundamentally structured according to principles of justice.
• Procedural Rationality: Rawls described his approach as “purely procedural,” aiming to demonstrate that his theory is completely rational and totally free from pre-existing biases or prior values.

Critique of Utilitarianism and the Kantian Turn

Before Rawls published his theory, liberal political thought was largely dominated by utilitarianism.

• The Flaws of Utilitarianism: The utilitarian theory of justice focuses on achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number, but Rawls heavily critiqued it for disregarding distributive justice and entirely neglecting human dignity.
• Distributive Justice: In the first part of his book, Rawls actively deconstructed this utilitarian approach before introducing his own framework for distributive justice.
• The Influence of Kant: Inspired by Immanuel Kant’s revival of the tradition of human dignity, Rawls identified his own theory of justice as deontological.
• Human Inviolability: Emphasizing that human dignity must serve as the fundamental principle of justice, Rawls wrote, “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on the principles of justice”.
• The Original Position: To successfully construct his framework of “justice as fairness,” Rawls relies on conceptualizing what he calls a “hypothetical original position”.

The Concept of the Original Position

The “original position” functions as a thought experiment and a heuristic device, drawing strong parallels to the “state of nature” concept found in traditional social contract theories. Importantly, it is designed strictly as a hypothetical scenario rather than a literal, pre-civilized period in human history.

The Distribution of Primary Goods

In this hypothetical setting, individuals assemble to establish the principles governing the distribution of primary goods.

• These primary goods encompass essential societal elements such as liberty, rights, income, wealth, and dignity.
• John Rawls employs this specific method to guarantee that the resulting principles of justice are fundamentally fair.

Human Nature and Social Cooperation

• Rawls posits that the people gathered in this scenario possess moral judgments and reasoning capabilities, which makes them “mutually disinterested,” meaning they act out of self-interest.
• Despite being mutually disinterested, these individuals recognize that living in a functioning society requires them to agree upon basic principles of cooperation.
• As a result of this understanding, they actively seek to determine how primary goods should be distributed.

The Veil of Ignorance: Concept and Purpose

The “veil of ignorance” serves as the defining feature of the original position, primarily functioning to prevent arbitrary facts about citizens from influencing their judgments. John Rawls argued that the various attributes individuals gain simply by virtue of their birth—such as class, caste, color, race, intelligence, and prowess—should not dictate how social institutions function towards them.

Because these societal positions are merely a “chance of nature,” Rawls found no moral dilemma in depriving individuals gathered in the original position of the knowledge of their specific societal standing. Consequently, the veil of ignorance effectively screens out specific personal information about the people involved.

Knowledge Retained Behind the Veil

While specific information is hidden, individuals behind the veil are not entirely without context.

• They retain knowledge of general facts about human life and rely on facts of common sense.
• Furthermore, it is understood that all citizens share an inherent interest in securing primary goods.

Assumptions Regarding Reasonable Citizens

Rawls establishes several fundamental assumptions regarding the “reasonable citizens” who have gathered in the original position:

• They are inherently rational and possess an intuitive sense of justice.
• They are mutually disinterested and are notably not motivated by envy.
• They are obligated to make a final agreement on the principles of justice and must strictly not renege on this agreement once the veil is finally lifted.

The Dual Function of the Original Position

Reasonable citizens ultimately want to exist within a society where they can cooperate with their fellow citizens on terms that are universally acceptable. To achieve this, Rawls utilizes the original position in two distinct forms:

• As an analytic device: This form is used to reduce highly complex social problems down to simple individual choices.
• As a justificatory device: This form serves to actively defend the fairness of the chosen principles of justice.

Information Concealed by the Veil

To ensure pure objectivity, people operating behind the veil of ignorance specifically do not know:

• Their designated place in society.
• Their specific class position or social status.
• Their given fortune, which includes both their natural abilities (such as intelligence and physical strength) and their material assets (such as land or money).
• Their personal conception of what constitutes the “good life”.
• The specific way their society is organized regarding which abilities and assets are deemed important.

Thus, the individuals who are kept behind the veil of ignorance are tasked with deciding what the system should be regarding the arrangement of primary goods. To rationally determine the order of priority for these goods, John Rawls believes that employing the “Maximin Principle” is the most logical and rational way forward.

The Maximin Principle

A rational individual naturally seeks to maximize the benefits derived from any advantages they possess. Conversely, a rational person will also aim to minimize the negative impact of any disadvantages they might hold. To make sound decisions, a rational person will imagine themselves in two distinct situations:

• What happens if they end up in the best possible scenario?
• What happens if they end up in the worst possible scenario?

Decision-Making in the Original Position

• When individuals are placed in the original position, they will carefully evaluate various options.
• Ultimately, they will choose the option where the worst possible outcome is inherently better than the worst possible outcome of any alternative choice.

Defining Maximin Reasoning

• According to John Rawls, a rational person inherently prioritizes thinking about advantages over disadvantages.
• This specific conceptual process of evaluating and determining advantages over disadvantages is formally defined as the “Maximin Principle” or “Maximin Reasoning”.

Reflexive Equilibrium

• Achieving Justice in the Original Position: John Rawls theorized that individuals situated in the “original position” will employ the method of reflexive equilibrium to successfully arrive at the core principles of justice.
• Reflection of Innate Morality: According to Rawls, these resulting principles of justice serve as a direct reflection of our inherent moral compass and the innate sense of justice embedded within our minds.
• Streamlining and Verifying Judgments: At its core, reflexive equilibrium functions as a systematic process through which we can effectively streamline and verify our moral judgments.
• The Role of Self-Examination: This crucial process of verification actively occurs when we take the time to critically question and challenge our own established beliefs.

Principles of Justice

John Rawls posited that individuals situated in the “original position” would be guided by reason and self-interest to form an agreement on the following core principles of justice:

1. The First Principle: Equal Liberty Principle

• This principle dictates that every individual must be granted an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty that is compatible with a similar level of liberty for everyone else.
• This concept closely aligns with the idea of “negative liberty,” which is defined as freedom from external restrictions or coercion.

2. The Second Principle: Fair Equality of Opportunity and the Difference Principle

Rawls’s second principle specifically addresses how social and economic inequalities should be managed. It states that such inequalities must be strategically arranged to satisfy two distinct conditions:

• Fair Equality of Opportunity: Inequalities must be attached to offices and positions that remain actively open to all people under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
  • This requires society to facilitate and provide everyone with the fundamental means necessary to participate fairly in social competition.
  • Consequently, all individuals should have an equal chance to compete for any public or private position they desire, a mandate that implicitly requires the provision of essential services like education and healthcare.
• The Difference Principle: Inequalities must be structured to provide the greatest possible benefit to the least advantaged members of society.
  • Functioning as a core principle of distributive justice, the Difference Principle is deeply rooted in what Rawls terms “Maximin Reasoning”.
  • It dictates that if there is to be an unequal distribution of wealth and income, the resulting inequality must ensure that the worst-off individuals are still in a better position than they would be under any alternative distribution model.
  • As Rawls eloquently notes in his framework of “justice as fairness,” this principle signifies that “men agree to share one another’s fate”.

Lexical Order in Rawls’s Theory of Justice

John Rawls established a strict hierarchy for his principles of justice, asserting that they must be arranged in a “lexical order”.

• Understanding Lexical Order: This concept operates similarly to the alphabetical ordering found in dictionaries; just as the letter ‘y’ cannot sequentially come before ‘x’, the principles must be satisfied in a specific, unbreakable sequence.
• The Hierarchy of Principles: Within this framework, the first principle (the principle of equal liberties) is positioned as lexically prior to the principle of equal opportunities. Furthermore, the principle of equal opportunities is itself strictly prior to the difference principle.
• Implications for Justice: The core meaning of this lexical priority is that the first principle can never be compromised or violated merely to fulfill, or justify the fulfillment of, the second principle.
• Protecting Core Liberties: In practical terms, this ensures that the fundamental distribution of equal rights and liberties cannot be sacrificed or violated in an attempt to justify a more equal distribution of opportunities.

Important Writings and Books

Year	Publication Title	Key Concepts & Significance
1971	Theory of Justice	Introduced foundational concepts including the Original Position, Veil of Ignorance, Difference Principle, Lexical Order, and the Maximin Principle.
1985	Justice as Fairness: Political, not Metaphysical (Article)	An article written to express the conception of justice as a balance of desert (talent), merit, and need.
1993	Political Liberalism	• Revised the original theory of justice based on the communitarian critique. • Explored the concepts of Overlapping Consensus and Public Reason.
1993	Laws of People	• Revised the theory of justice based on the cosmopolitan critique presented by Thomas Pogge and Charles Beitz, which allowed John Rawls to add a global perspective. • Identified five distinct types of political regimes: liberal societies, hierarchical societies, outlaw states, burdened societies, and benevolent absolutism.
2001	Justice as Fairness: A Restatement	Published specifically as a formal restatement of his 1971 classic, A Theory of Justice.

Important Terms and Key Concepts

• Chain Connection:
  • A society is described as “chain-connected” if introducing an advantage that successfully raises the expectations of the lowest position simultaneously raises the expectations of all the positions in between.
  • For instance, if greater expectations for entrepreneurs result in benefits for the unskilled worker, they will automatically benefit the semi-skilled worker as well.
• Close-knitted:
  • A society is considered “close-knit” when it is entirely impossible to raise or lower the expectations of any representative individual without correspondingly raising or lowering the expectations of every other representative individual, particularly those of the least advantaged.
  • In this framework, expectations intricately “hang together,” meaning there is absolutely no “loose-jointedness” within the social structure.
• Public Reasoning:
  • The principle of public reason dictates that any moral or political rules designed to regulate common life must be fundamentally justifiable or acceptable to all individuals over whom those rules claim to have authority.
• Overlapping Consensus:
  • Overlapping consensus refers to a situation where diverse individuals, despite holding different comprehensive doctrines, successfully agree upon a common set of political conceptions of justice.
  • Within this consensus, citizens actively support the same foundational basic laws, even though they do so for entirely different underlying reasons.