Uy, Jonas Angelo A.

B.S. Customs Administration

Justice as Fairness
Some people make billions of dollars, while others pass away because they can't afford to buy food
or medicine. Due to their gender, religion, race, or other characteristics, many people are denied
the freedom to speak their mind, participate in political life, or pursue a job, while their fellow
citizens are granted these rights. Your parents' income is a good indicator of your future earnings
or whether you'll go to college in many societies.
These facts appear unfair to many people. Others disagree, arguing that although these facts are
regrettable, they are not matters of justice. A successful theory of justice must clarify why obvious
injustices are unfair and aid in the settlement of current conflicts. John Rawls (1921-2002), a
Harvard philosopher, is best known for his attempt to define a just society in his book A Theory
of Justice (1971). We need to arrange society in a way that reasonable members of that society can
accept. Citizens could strive to come to an agreement on fundamental principles collectively.
Reasonable people frequently differ about how to live. We don't have to decide every little thing;
we simply need to care about laws governing important institutions that make up society's
"fundamental framework," like the legal system and economy. As per Rawls, a just society will
abide by the laws that everyone would have approved of in the first place. People are making
decisions while shrouded in ignorance since they are unsure of their personal situations or even
what they consider to be the ideal living. This has an impact on the kinds of outcomes they will
support. For example, it would be irrational for deliberators to support a society where only
Christians have property rights because it will harm their chances of succeeding in life if they are
discovered to be non-Christian when the veil is 'lifted. Additionally, it stands to reason that
decision-makers won't pick a society with racial, gender, or other unfairly discriminatory norms
since, if the curtain were to be lifted, they may find themselves on the losing end of such laws.
This leads to Rawls' first rule of justice, which states that everyone has an equal right to the
maximum amount of freedom that is consistent with everyone else having the same degree of
freedom. In addition, Rawls contends that due of their ignorance of probabilities, deliberators
would exercise extraordinary caution and adhere to what he labels the "maximin" principle,
making sure that the worst conceivable outcome would be as favorable as possible in terms of
primary goods. The notion of complete equality in primary commodities might tempt us if we
consider ourselves to be deliberators. This guarantees that nobody will be better off than you for
illogical reasons at the very least.
Now it is clear how Rawls' theory might assess the problems brought up earlier. Each appears to
transgress his fundamental notions of justice, at least within particular communities, and would
hence be viewed as unfair. Therefore, even if we ultimately reject Rawls' method, it at least appears
to provide intuitively correct solutions in a number of crucial situations and for plausible
explanations.