Ideas from Théorie de la justice
By John Rawls
830 ideas
Sample Ideas
- Under justice as fairness, the sentiment of justice is not a mysterious or separate desire but is identical with the desire to act on principles that rational individuals would consent to in an initial situation of equal representation, and with the desire to act in accordance with principles that express human nature as free and equal rational beings; this contractual and Kantian characterization makes the moral sentiments intelligible and explains how they can regulate our lives.
- Historically, constitutional governments have largely failed to secure the fair value of political liberty because they have tolerated extreme inequalities of property and wealth and neglected to devote public resources to the institutions needed for political equality; the democratic political process, viewed as regulated rivalry, is structurally prone to accumulation and entrenchment of political power by advantaged groups, with universal suffrage and privately financed parties proving insufficient counterweights.
- In Rawls’s account, the natural duty of justice—not the principle of fairness—is the primary basis of citizens’ political ties and duties to a just constitutional regime; only the more favored members of society typically incur a genuine political obligation to uphold the constitution through the principle of fairness, whereas oppressed minorities who justifiably practice civil disobedience usually lack such an obligation to the regime as a whole but do acquire important fairness-based obligations of loyalty and fidelity to one another through their voluntary political associations.
- To preserve the fair value of political liberty in a society with private ownership of the means of production, justice requires institutional measures such as broad dispersion of property and wealth, public financing to support free public discussion, and tax‑based funding of political parties independent of private economic interests, so that party organization and political debate are not dominated by wealthy groups.
- The last stage of the sequence—application of rules by judges, administrators, and citizens with full knowledge of particular facts—is not the standpoint from which to decide the grounds and limits of political obligation; questions of duty, civil disobedience, and conscientious refusal belong to partial‑compliance theory and must be settled from the original position after ideal principles have been chosen.
- Rawls extends the contract doctrine and the original position to the international realm by imagining representatives of different nations, placed under a veil of ignorance about their societies’ particular circumstances and power, choosing fundamental political principles to regulate the law of nations and adjudicate conflicting claims among states; justice between states is then defined by the principles that would be chosen in this fair original position between nations.
- A citizen in a conscript‑using, democratic, nearly just society may be justified—and in some circumstances even obligated—in conscientiously refusing to enter the armed forces in relation to a particular war when either (a) the aims of the conflict are unjust (such as economic gain or national power, or attacking others’ liberty), or (b) the war is conducted in systematic violation of the moral law of war, such that participation would likely force him into flagrantly unjust commands; in such cases both the law of nations and the domestic principles of justice support his refusal, and a pattern of such refusals may amount to a reasonable, 'contingent pacifism' tailored to current unjust international conditions.
- The primary subject-matter of a theory of justice, and thus of justice as fairness, is the basic structure of society, understood in connection with its role in organizing social cooperation.
- The basic liberties of citizens must be equal for all in a just society, while social and economic inequalities are permissible only if everyone gains relative to an initial benchmark of equality and if positions of authority are genuinely open to all.
- According to Rawls, the intuitionist grants that our balancing of principles can be consistently described (e.g. by mathematical functions or indifference curves), but denies that there are any further constructive, ‘recognizably ethical’ principles that ground or justify these weights; refuting intuitionism therefore requires exhibiting such constructive criteria.