John Rawls: Carly Coleman H01 (Final Blog Post)

John Rawls (LHP 38)

Carly Coleman H01

Back Ground

Political philosopher John Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 21, 1921. His father was a prominent lawyer and his mother was a chapter president of the League of Women Voters. He studied at both Princeton and Cornell, and he taught at Cornell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard. He grew up with Christian views and even considered priesthood, but lost his sense of faith during World War 2 when seeing the atrocities of war and hearing of the horrendous nature of the Holocaust as an infantry soldier. In the 1960s, he spoke out against the Vietnam draft due to how it preyed on African Americans and the less fortunate.

Justice as Fairness & The "Thought Experiment"

Rawls had a strong sense of social justice. He called his version "Justice as Fairness." This idea consisted of two ideas: the First Principle and the Second Principle. These are found in his work, A Theory of Justice.The First Principle, found on page 266, states, "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all." What this means is that everyone has the same rights, which cannot be stripped away by anyone, individual or government. Rawls believed this included the United States’ Bill of Rights, but also some others such as freedom to travel and some other broad sections of human rights. He was able to identify and understand the rights of privatized companies, individuals, and workers to own private land. However, he left out the right of anyone to own the means of production, and also the right to inherit wealth, as they were not basic liberties in his mind. Though he agreed that basic liberties could be limited, they should only be limited for “the sake of liberty.” This means it can be justified to stripped away basic liberties of intolerant groups that could cause harm.

The Second Principle, also found on page 266, states, "Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both: (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity." This focuses on equality. Rawls was not naïve and realized that society can never be perfectly equal. Inequalities will always exist within a society. They result from things such as classism, personal motivation, and inherited characteristics (skin color, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.). However, he thought that we should seek to reduce inequalities in whatever ways we can. “Offices and positions” especially means the most desirable jobs in private business and public employment. These jobs should be able to be given to anyone by society giving “fair and equal opportunity.” To do this, society would have to provide everyone the same, easy access to education, as well as take discrimination out of the equation.

 

Rawls has faced controversy for his principles, especially the second half of his Second Principle, the Difference Principle. Here he states that inequalities should be arranged in a way to where they are “to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.” He is referring to the people who are on the bottom of the social and economic totem pole. These, in Rawls' eyes, are usually unskilled workers who earn the lowest wages in society. The idea of this principle is that the improvement of the least advantaged group in society is maximized. This would include providing "fair and equal opportunity," but also could include a minimum wage or a minimum income. He acknowledged that this made his Principles very liberal in nature. Rawls also vocalizes that there is an order of priority to his principles. The first ("basic liberties") takes priority over the first half of the second ("fair equality of opportunity")  which takes priority over the second half of the second (Difference Principle). Both of these, though, are necessary for a just society.

From this came Rawls' "Thought Experiment," or what he preferred to call it, the "Original Position." Rawls believed that if the constitution, education systems, and the economy did operate fairly for all citizens, then there could never really be social justice in a society. He looked back and studied the thoughts of philosophers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, both who created ideas of a social contract.

In this thought process, Rawls imagined a group of people that would evaluate principles of societal justice and choose the best ones under strict conditions. They could only debate with logic and reason. There choices would be binding for ever. Rawls also added a concept called the "veil of ignorance." This means that the people who were deciding how society should operate would be unaware of their economic status, occupational position, race, gender, and other divisive factors. This, Rawls believed, would allow reasonable people to choose the option where even the least advantaged benefited. From this "Thought Experiment," Rawls began to hold the position that the U.S. has not yet reached his ideal form of society.

This video provides a nice visual of what the "veil of ignorance" entails.

A Criticism of Rawls

One of the most profound criticisms of Rawls is argued by Antony Flew. The thesis of his critique is that Rawls completely disregarded the ordinary meaning of the word "justice." Flew said that the regular, everyday definition of justice is that each gets what they deserve, whether positive or negative. This, due to the absence of bias, does not necessarily mean that everyone gets an equal amount of fair resources. Rawls defended his egalitarian view of society with a mistaken premise. Because they are arbitrary from the moral point of view, Rawls did not see any reason for a person to benefit from any superior abilities they may possess.

For example, if one were to say to Rawls, "Of course Freddie Freeman deserves the outrageous pay he receives for being the Dodgers's first baseman. He has natural talent and is using it to make profit from entertainment," Rawls would most certainly tell the person that they were wrong. He would conclude that Freddie Freeman has all of his talents by sheer luck. There is no moral merit in his abilities. There is no reason for him to benefit from winning the genetic lottery. He is undeserving.

According the Flew, there is an evident fallacy in Rawls perception. Rawls strayed from the claim that natural abilities should not allow one to profit to a much more controversial contention that these abilities are undeserved. As Flew states, "The reason why this argument appears to go through is that the word ‘undeserved’ does indeed usually carry overtones of outrage, calling for redress. What is needed now is to introduce a third category of the not-deserved to cover what is neither, meritoriously, deserved, nor scandalously, undeserved."

Freddie Freeman doesn't have to worry about losing income. Though he did not gain his talent from moral deeds, he should still be allowed to profit. To go further, other extremely talented people should be able to benefit, because in most cases, they have to put in an extraordinary amount of hard work to polish their skills. Do they not then benefit from meritorious ventures?

To this Rawls argued that the ability to work as hard as these people do also comes from moral luck. This goes to show how far Rawls pushed his views into absurdity. It can be said (in my personal opinion) that if this is the case, that no one can benefit from any of the individual properties that make up their character and personality, Rawls has reduced everyone in his ideal society to mindless zombies who have no abilities at all.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't seem very ideal to me.

Discussion Questions: 

1) Does Rawls, in his principles, allow enough room for enough tolerance for strong beliefs, such as those that stem from religion? 

2) In your opinion, is Rawls's Theory of Justice adequate, or is it misguided?