Rawls John (b.1921), American philosopher widely recognized as one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century. His A Theory of Justice (1971) is one of the primary texts in political philosophy. Political Liberalism (1993) revises Rawls’s theory to make his conception of justice compatible with liberal pluralism, but leaves the core of his conception intact. Drawing on the liberal and democratic social contract traditions of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, Rawls argues that the most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position. Since these principles determine the justice of society’s political constitution, economy, and property rules (its ‘basic structure’), Rawls takes a fair agreement situation to be one where everyone is impartially situated as equals. In this so-called original position everyone is equally situated by a hypothetical ‘veil of ignorance.’ This veil requires individuals to set aside their knowledge of their particular differences, including knowledge of their talents, wealth, social position, religious and philosophical views, and particular conceptions of value. Rawls argues that in the hypothetical original position everyone would reject utilitarianism, perfectionism, and intuitionist views. Instead they would unanimously accept justice as fairness. This conception of justice consists mainly of two principles. The first principle says that certain liberties are basic and are to be equally provided to all: liberty of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of association, equal political liberties, freedom and integrity of the person, and the liberties that maintain the rule of law. These are basic liberties, because they are necessary to exercise one’s ‘moral powers.’ The two moral powers are, first, the capacity to be rational, to have a rational conception of one’s good; and second, the capacity for a sense of justice, to understand, apply, and act from requirements of justice. These powers constitute essential interests of free and equal moral persons since they enable each person to be a free and responsible agent taking part in social cooperation. Rawls’s second principle of justice, the difference principle, regulates permissible differences in rights, powers, and privileges. It defines the limits of inequalities in wealth, income, powers, and positions that may exist in a just society. It says, first, that social positions are to be open to all to compete for on terms of fair equality of opportunity. Second, inequalities in wealth, income, and social powers and positions are permissible only if they maximally benefit the least advantaged class in society. The difference principle implies that a just economic system distributes income and wealth so as to make the class of least advantaged persons better off than they would be under any alternative economic system. This principle is to be consistent with the ‘priority’ of the first principle, which requires that equal basic liberties cannot be traded for other benefits. The least advantaged’s right to vote, for example, cannot be limited for the sake of improving their relative economic position. Instead, a basic liberty can be limited only for the sake of maintaining other basic liberties.
Rawls contends that, taking the two principles of justice together, a just society maximizes the worth to the least advantaged of the basic liberties shared by all (Theory, p. 205). The priority of basic liberty implies a liberal egalitarian society in which each person is ensured adequate resources to effectively exercise her basic liberties and become independent and self-governing. A just society is then governed by a liberal-democratic constitution that protects the basic liberties and provides citizens with equally effective rights to participate in electoral processes and influence legislation. Economically a just society incorporates a modified market system that extensively distributes income and wealth – either a ‘property-owning democracy’ with widespread ownership of means of production, or liberal socialism.
See also CONTRACTARIANISM , JUSTICE , KANT, LIBERALISM , RIGHTS , UTILITARIANIS. S.Fr.