Political science seminar

Theories of Aristotle, John

Rawls and Robert Nozick on
Justice

Gautam Jayasurya
Roll no: 339
1st Year B.A LLB
 Justice: Some aspect to revise
► Justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics,
rationality, law, natural law, fairness and equity.
► Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring
parts of the person or city- Plato
► Variations of Justice:
1. Utilitarianism
2. Retributive justice
3. Distributive justice
4. Oppressive Law
► Justice as supreme virtue
1. Division of society
2. ‘sticking to one’s station’
3. Proper performance of duties
 Theories of justice: Aristotle

► Division of justice
1. Complete justice: Regulation of public and social relations
2. Particular justice: proper distribution of wealth, honor etc
► Division of Particular justice
1. Distributive justice
2. Corrective justice
► Criticism
1. Self contradictory e.g., Universal applicability of the term
‘contribution to society’
2. He has pleaded cultivation of virtue as the criteria for distributing
offices on the other hand he argues offices and honors should not
be monopolized.
3. Preference to duties over rights
 J.Rawls- ’A theory of justice’(1972)

► Equality as the central question of justice.

► Puts forward the theory of ‘justice as fairness’.
► Pro-socialist approach
► Introduction of ‘veil of ignorance’.
► First principle: 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.
► Second principle: social and economic inequalities are to arranged so
that they are both:
1. To the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference
principle)
2. Attached to the offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair
and equal opportunity.
 R.Nozick - ‘libertarian entitlement theory’
► Pro-capitalist approach
► Nozick classifies theories of justice as (1) either end-result or historical,
and (2) either patterned or unpatterned.
► According to Nozick there are three sets of rules of justice, defining:
1. how things not previously possessed by anyone may be acquired;
2. how possession may be transferred from one person to another; and
3. what must be done to rectify injustices arising from violations of (1)
and (2).
► If the initial distribution of holdings is just and every transaction that
subsequently occurs is just, then the distribution of holdings will be
just at all later times. A just transaction, again roughly, is one which is
mutually and voluntarily.
► State should only ensure everybody’s equal rights and not more than
that.
► There are three observations that undermine the usefulness of this
theory of justice.
1. There will always be unjust transactions to deal with. Doing so is the
purpose of the police, one of the two institutions in a minimal state.
2. Not all unjust transactions will be detected, or even if they are it will
not always be possible to provide compensation.
3. Either the entire distribution of holdings is just or it is not.
► Nozick’s main argument against Rawls.
1. Principles of justice that justify redistribution are patterned principles.
2. The free exercise of liberty upsets patterns.
3. Patterns are therefore unstable if liberty is permitted.
4. We face a choice between the pattern and liberty.
 Comparison and conclusion
► Aristotle’s view: A sort of workable democracy in which all have a
share in the offices of honour but virtuous have a preference over the
common masses.
► Criticism of Rawls’s theory: Difference principles uses taxes tom
redistribute wealth in order to compensate for a lack of natural talent.
State uses talented as a resource to benefit the untalented. Subjecting
to people to a regime of forced labour. State having a property right in
every property.
► Redistributive action by the government unjust besides no mention of a
central distribution agency of wealth and privileges given in Rawls’s
theory
► Natural lottery is not unjust.
► Criticism of Nozick’s Theory: Distinction between end-result and
historical theory is not as sharp as Nozick supposes.
 Sources

► ‘An introduction to political science and thought’, R.C Vermani, 2005-

06, Gitanjali Publishing house, Delhi
► ‘An introduction to Political Thought A conceptual Toolkit’, Peri Roberts
and Peter Sutch, Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi, 2005

► Web links:
1. http://thesamovar.net/node/41
2. www.humanities.mq.edu.au/Ockham/y64l17.html
3. thesamovar.net/node/41