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COURSE- 4003

ASSIGNMENT ON THEORY OF JUSTICE

SUBMITTED TO SUBMITTED BY

MOHAMMAD AYNUL ISLAM RASHED JAHAN KHAN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR ID: 907

DEPT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE MGS 9TH BATCH

Assignment on Theory of Justice by ID 907

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Introduction.
1. Recently our world has been hit by a pandemic which we have not witnessed before. We
have no cure of it neither this generation have any experience battling such situation. Almost all
the governments in the globe except Sweden, imposed a countrywide lock down to restrict the
movement of the people as well as the spread of the virus. Amongst these states we have
witnessed the rich passed their time in luxury condos where the poor suffered and died of hunger
in their slums. This is not the only time we have witnessed such incidents; it is happening almost
all the time everywhere in the world. In many countries, people are denied rights to free speech,
to participate in political life, or to pursue a career, because of their gender, religion, race or
other factors like ideology, political affiliation, while their fellow citizens enjoy these rights. In
many societies, what best predicts one’s future income.

2. To many of us, these facts might seem unjust. Others might disagree: even if these facts
are regrettable, they aren’t issues of justice. A successful theory of justice must explain why
clear injustices are unjust and help us resolve current disputes. A Harvard philosopher named
John Rawls who is best known for his A Theory of Justice (published in 1971), which
attempted to define a just society. Nearly every contemporary scholarly discussion of justice
quotes the references from A Theory of Justice. On this assignment, I will try to review this
political philosophy.

Utilitarianism and Justice.

3. Before Jhon Rawls Theory of Justice, the dominant political philosophy for at least a 100
years was Utilitarianism. There are many different forms of Utilitarianism but they have all their
foundations in simple premise “The greatest good for the greatest number”. In political
philosophy these translate to something like but just society organizes its institutions norms and
laws so as to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number. Imagine you're a civil servant
you're tasked with mapping a bus route through several villages. By which principles do you
map the route? so that it can pick up the greatest number? This is the utilitarian approach. The
critics of utilitarianism saw a problem but it seems to justify certain actions that most perceive of
intuitively as unethical. Imagine a society where ten persons are held in slavery the slaves are
unhappy but there's an increase in happiness for the remaining ninety percent. In this instance the
greatest good for the greatest number seems to justify slavery. Or, imagine a surgeon with
another doctor dying on the operating table the dying doctor needs new heart and the surgeon
remembers that there's a homeless man outside, the dying doctor is surely going to do more for
others if he is saved than that of homeless man. So, the surgeon goes sedate the homeless man
and kills him. Again, utilitarianism seems to justify this. Rawls thought that no one had
accounted for this problem adequately. The problem with utilitarianism is one of Rights that
certain rights just shouldn't be violated no matter the benefit to others. For example every village
might have a right to be served on a bus route, even if one of the villages is tiny in the brute
becomes less efficient not picking up the maximum amount of people over all. Rules writes that

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we have an intuition that individuals have an inviolability founded on justice or as some say on
natural rights which even the welfare of everyone else cannot override rules thought that
philosophers had failed to account for this problem and that it needed to be included in a theory
of what the model society should look like.

Original Position & Veil of Ignorance.

4. The question politically is how we organize what rules calls the basic structure of society,
how should institutions lose economic practices and rights be organized. If we could start fresh the
question is what is justice what is fairness if we accept that these things are in some way important.
What is it exactly that they mean he writes that justice is the first virtue of social institutions and
that laws and institutions must be reformed or abolished if they are unjustified. He takes inspiration
from the social contract tradition of enlightenment philosophers like Hobbes Locke and Rousseau.
They imagined what people would be like in a state of nature and how a society would come into
fruition when they came together to cooperate. Rules argues we should partake in a similar thought
experiment what he calls an original position. What's chosen in the original position is the
principles that free and rational persons concern to further their own interests would accept in an
initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their Association. Importantly in
the original position we decide what the basic structure of society should look like from behind
what rules calls a veil of ignorance. Rawls writes that among the actual features of this situation
is that no one knows his place in society his class position or social status nor does anyone know
his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities his intelligence strengths and the like I
shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special
psychological propensity. Here 'he' is the principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of
ignorance. In other words, the only way to theorize a just society is if we imagine that we don't
know what place we take in it. In this sense it's like dividing a cake when you know you'll be the
last person to choose the slice. You'll make sure the sizes are fair under the veil of ignorance. A
person can't choose low taxes because they're rich or high taxes because they're poor. So how
would you choose there's an element's roles here that could be described as liberal reason or liberal
rationality. Rawls assumes that individuals in the original position will be rational individualist s'
that they would choose in a way that rationally benefits them the most and rational here discounts
gambling and looks to maximize gain in a mutually disinterested way. Critics have complained
that this presumes individualistic values but role argues that even if you're more charitable than
most or less materialistic which you wouldn't know at this point anyway under the veil of ignorance
you would still choose to give whatever you rationally maximized away and so out of all the
alternatives this principle would be chosen. In the original position rules discusses a number of
political or moral propositions that might be considered from behind a veil of ignorance. Rawls
starts with utilitarianism but in addition to the problems we've seen there's another reason
utilitarianism is unlikely to be chosen. Imagine two societies of 100 people in one society a 60%
have few crores between them the other 40% has 10tk between them in the second society 50%
have 4 lac tk between them and the other half 6 lac tk they both have pretty much the same amount

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of money but it's spread in different ways. Utilitarianism though favors the first society because it
has 10tk more but this seems ridiculous to us surely everyone would choose the second society. It
seems unlikely rules rights the persons who view themselves as equals would agree to a principle
which may require lesser life prospects. For some simply for the sake of a greater sum of
advantages enjoyed by others for these reasons rules dismisses utilitarianism.

Libertarianism & Justice.

5. Rawls moves on to libertarianism, what if we conceive of the basic structure as something
approximating liberal free markets and unlimited property rights. If this were the case, we'd enter
into society with two assets unnatural talents and the assets bestowed on us at birth inheritance
family wealth education from parents and their peers etc which we benefit from by accident or
good fortune and it's for this second reason that he rejects libertarianism. Rawl writes that
intuitively the most obvious injustice of the system of natural Liberty is that it permits distributive
shares to be improperly influenced by these factors. So arbitrary from a moral point of view it
hardly seems just nor efficient the person a from a rich background makes the most of his natural
talents because their parents can afford education while person B cannot. Traditionally liberals
have corrected for this through fair equality of opportunity. Rawl says that those with similar
abilities and skills should have similar life chances. More specifically assuming that there's a
distribution of natural assets those who are at the same level of talent and ability and have the same
willingness to use them should have the same prospects of success regardless of their own. But
what about those talents and abilities?, we also come to have them by accident and good fortune
not fairness and justice. Is it fair just that Karim is born good at mathematics and Kamal born
without legs or Shima with natural charisma and Rima with debilitating shyness? Furthermore in
the original position we don't know what our natural talents are going to be we come then to
equality of outcome. If we don't earn our family fortune or natural assets then is it only just to
share in the fruits of society equally. Rawl considers this position but concludes that it wouldn't
encourage harder work reward better musician say or innovators. Some people might simply want
to work harder because they like work while others content with living a simpler life. Rawls
proposes an alternative the difference principle if we are reasoning from behind the veil of
ignorance that we'd like more of life's what Rawls calls primary goods rights and liberties
opportunities and powers income and wealth then we would choose a system that made everyone
better off even if there are inequalities. Despite it being chance that we earn our natural abilities
and so they have nothing to do with fairness yet is fair to use those natural abilities to the advantage
of ourselves and everyone else in society. He writes that the higher expectations of those better
situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of
the least advantaged members of society. It's the difference principle also referred to as maximize
the minimum prospects that leads Rawls to his formulation of the two principles of justice as
fairness the principles are in lexical order that is that the first should always be prioritized over the
second. They are first each person has an equal right to a fully adequate ski of equal basic liberties
which is compatible with a similar scheme of basic liberties for all. And second social and
economic inequality set to be arranged so that they are both a to the greatest benefit of the least

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advantaged and be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity. The two principles though might generally be summed up like this he writes all social
values liberty and opportunity income and wealth and the basis of self respect are to be distributed
equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these values is to everyone's advantage. For
rules each part of justice as fairness grows out of this fundamental observation, first you need basic
liberties he says political Liberty the right to vote and to be illegible for public office together with
freedom of speech and assembly Liberty of conscience and freedom of thought freedom of the
person along with the right to hold personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure
as defined by the rule of law. But then you need to be able to fully realize these basic liberties.
Make sure positions are open to all and that each has the possibility of fully realizing their
capabilities discrimination must be prohibited. Education provided for those that cannot access it.
This is the only way those basic liberties are protected. Similarly Rawls argue that in choosing an
economic system we would adopt a maximum strategy that's maximizing the minimum possible
position that we take and so we then choose the different principle we choose the maximum
strategy. He argues because of the seriousness of the unrepeatable choice in front of us. We don't
know the probabilities of ending up rich or poor and elite or a discriminated against minority and
the maximum principle guarantees the minimum rights and livelihood partake in a productive
society. It's important to understand though that for rules the difference principle is not a statement
about taxation or public or private ownership of property although it does inevitably lead to those
questions.
6. Later on, it's simply about the basic structure of institutions that they should be organized
in a way that makes the least advantaged better off and that inequalities are justified only if the
least advantaged are better off by them. While Rawls has been hugely influential he has many
critics too a frequent criticism has been that he is risk-averse that not everyone would play it safe
in the original position and some would gamble for a more utilitarian society. If the inequalities
weren't too wide but he's also been praised for combining liberal individualist and egalitarian
socialist values.

Conclusion.
7. His model of fairness could be applied to a libertarian socialist society and a capitalist one
although rules himself favored something like the former or a property-owning democracy where
everyone not only had the rights to own property. but really did had a hand in the means of
production. Ultimately the two principles reflect that we are both social creatures and
individualistic ones and I think this is one of a theory of Justices most important contributions to
political thought the two principles are a product of the idea that there are parts of an individual
that social life and politics wouldn't be possible without that then must be inviolable and which we
wouldn't bargain away even for the sake of a richer society that we would only come to sign the
social contract if it made us all better.

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Ref:
1. https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2018/07/27/john-rawls-a-theory-of-justice/
2. Rawls, John (1999b) A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.

Assignment on Theory of Justice by ID 907