John Rawls – “Justice as Fairness”

John Rawls
• 1921 – 2002

• Served in WWII in the

Pacific; witnessed
aftermath of Hiroshima
bombing

• Went back to college to

get doctorate in Moral
Philosophy (Princeton)
 A Theory of Justice (1971)
• Book written by Rawls as an exploration of
distributive justice

• Distributive Justice – how do we fairly organize

society and give out opportunity and material
wealth?
• Rawls was interested in the question of how
we could design a fair society that everyone
could agree on.

• But this is really hard to do, because people

have different goals, and different strengths
and weaknesses. Agreement is hard to
achieve.
 A Thought Experiment
• Rawls works through a thought experiment to
reach his conclusion of how we can fairly
distribute the goods of society.

• His thought experiment includes a kind of

social contract.
• Social contract – an agreement entered into
by individuals, that creates society
 A Question for You!
Which ONE person
should be in charge
X 60 of dividing up the
candy among the 3
bags?

Row 1 Row 2 Row 3

 Can you change the
situation to ensure
a fair outcome with
only ONE person
X 60 dividing the goods?

Row 1 Row 2 Row 3

 The Thought Experiment
• The Original Position:
• Imagine yourself before society was created.
You’re all just individuals living free and
independent, without society to organize and
guide you.

• You decide to create society with other

individuals, because you think life will be better
with society.
• You will pick the principles that will guide your
society, but how do we make sure they’re fair,
and that everyone will agree to them?

• Some strong people might push others to

make a society where the strong are better off
(advantaged)

• Males might try to make a society where

males are advantaged. The rich might try to
make sure the rich will have advantage.
• And if people are pushing to make themselves
more advantaged, it will probably be really
difficult to select a system that everyone will
agree to.

• Therefore, we add to the Original Position

another concept: The Veil of Ignorance

• Veil of Ignorance – condition where the

people don’t know anything about
themselves.
• Under the veil of ignorance, you don’t know if
you are rich or poor, male or female, Korean,
Canadian, African, etc., you don’t even know
what your goals and wants are in life.

• What kinds of society do you think people will

create if they are in the original position, but
WITH the veil of ignorance? Why do you think
so?
 Maximin Strategy
• People will employ a specific strategy in this
situation.

• People will try to maximize the benefit for

those groups in the worst situation.
(maximizing the minimum)
• B/c of FEAR of ending up in the worst
situation.
• AFTER the decisions on society are made, then
the veil of ignorance is lifted, and people find
out who they are.

• By now they have already agreed to the setup

for society, and can’t argue with what they
agreed to before.
 Rawls’ Expected Results
• Rawls believed that people would agree to the
following under the veil of ignorance:

• Liberty Principle – equal right to basic liberties,

shared by all. (e.g. right to property, right to
vote)
• No one would want to end up without these
rights, so they’d agree everyone should have
them.
• Equality Principle: (Two pieces)

• Fair Equality of Opportunity: (first piece)

offices and positions should be open to any
individual, regardless of sex, social
background, ethnicity,

• Strong: Not just “right” of opportunity, but an

effectively equal chance if you’ve got the
same natural abilities.
• Equality Principle: (Two pieces)

• Difference Principle: (second piece) Any

inequalities in starting position should be
designed to benefit the LESS advantaged in
society.

• Maximin Strategy: People are afraid they’ll

end up being in a disadvantaged group in
society, so they will agree they should be
given some help.
• Difference Principle example: (and Maximin)

• In Canada, Native peoples are very

disadvantaged economically, and face strong
racism and prejudice in Canadian society.

• So in the original position, people would be

happy to allow Native peoples to get special
scholarships to university. They would think
“If I am a native person I will face many
hardships, and help in education will be fair”
 Order of Priority:
• Rawls has the principles take priority over
each other if they conflict.

• Liberty Principle is the strongest, and wins

over the others.
• Next is Equality of Opportunity
• And last is Difference Principle

• E.g. You can’t have as a difference that some

can own property and others can’t.
 Three Theories of Justice:
• Ideas about distributive justice from 3
perspectives:
• I.e. Should the gov’t redistribute wealth from
the rich to the poorer people?

• Nozick, Utilitarians, Rawls

 Nozick
• As a liberalist, believes that the market will
bring the best results for the most people.

• Therefore, the government should not

interfere to redistribute wealth.
 Utilitarians
• Law of diminishing marginal utility: As you get
more and more, you get less and less utility
(happiness) from it.

$500 making a big

difference, or a small
difference.
 Utilitarianism
• Because utilitarian thinkers want to maximize
the total utility across all people, the
government should redistribute some wealth.

• Poor people will gain a LOT of utility from

500,000 won, but rich people probably won’t
even notice it’s gone. So moving 500,000 from
a rich to a poor person is desired by utilitarians.
 Rawls
• Because of the Difference Principle, it is just to
redistribute some wealth from the rich to the
poor,

• Because of the maximin strategy, where

people will allow the most disadvantaged
group to gain some benefit.