2024-04-2512:12 Status:Complete Tags: John Rawls
Overview
First Principle: Fair Equality of Rights. Rawls’ first principle was made to address inequalities of rights and freedoms of people. He believed that every citizen should be entitled to the same scheme of rights and liberties.
Second Principle: Basic Structure of the Distribution of Opportunities, Offices, Income, Wealth and in General Social Advantages. (a) The social structures that shape this distribution must follow fair equality of opportunity. = Everyone should have access to the same opportunities regardless of socioeconomic position, circumstance etc. (b) Difference principle: “Social inequalities are to benefit the least advantaged members of society, PL at 6”
Veil of Ignorance; Original Position Rawls argues that a rational person would prefer justice as fairness to Utilitarianism behind the Veil of Ignorance; Original Position. People in the Original Position, OP, an individual has no conception of their current selves while being conscious: they exist in a kind of primordial form before they were assigned Race, Gender, Religion, Social Class etc. by Fortune. This state is what Rawls refers to as being behind the veil of ignorance. This prompted parties in the OP to question in what world would they feel safe to enter if they did not know who they would be born as. And how we reform that society would be one where a person would Maximin their odds at having a happy life.
However there is an issue of qualia here. One might not know the extent to which someone faces hardship and would argue from their experience that it would be easier to be a disadvantaged group that receives more rewards per the Difference Principle. This can be seen when particularly white people weaponize their minority status e.g. “I’m a neurodivergent, queer, trans-fem disabled… so racism doesn’t exist = Weaponized Minority Status”
Economic Thought Experiment Economic thought experiment: net value in a society = 100,000. 1 person has 90,000 and others distribute the remaining 10,000 vs. a society with a net value of 100,000 and 50% have 60,000 and the other 50% have 40,000. By distributing wealth, people would minmax their odds by being born in the second society.
Criticism
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John Rawls is an advocate for the belief that any inequalities that exist in a social system. should favor the least well-off, because this levels the playing field of society. This is a form of needs based justice: correcting for inherent inequalities in society. There are some who argue that justice as fairness is actually unfair to those who have gotten the most either through hard work, or because they happened to win life’s natural lottery. Robert Nozick disagreed with this notion: Suppose there were some basketball player that were more popular and desired a higher wage to compensate for their popularity, Nozick argues that they are entitled to higher compensation as they are able to procure more benefits for society than the other players. He argues that it is absurd to consider a scenario in which the popular basketball player deserves less pay than the other players, because they are in need. Moreover, to claim that people who are starving should be supported is absurd.
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How can laws be formed for the underrepresented members of society behind the veil of ignorance/original position if one cannot perceive the unique turmoil’s of some group? = Never seen a person with a physical disability, and thus cannot make an effort to accommodate them. → No matter how much someone removes themself, they will always be biased due to qualia.
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Representatives of a more broad social class.
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People who are worse off than another may not be to another person.
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Assumptions made that inequality only exists between lower class and higher class= middle-class inequality still exists. = lexical version of the Difference principle:
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Issue of talent and natural (in)capability.
Sources:
Richardson, Henry S. “John Rawls.” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved on 2-Nov-2022 from https://iep.utm.edu/rawls/#SH2d https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-JQ17X6VNg&list=WL&index=7