John Rawls' Conception of Justice
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John Rawls offered a conception of justice as an alternative to the doctrine of utilitarianism in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice. John Rawls states two principles of justice which he says are provisional. The first of these states that each person is to have an equal right to the most basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others. The second states that social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both a) reasonably expected to be to the advantage of everyone and b) attached to positions and offices open to all. Rawls says that these principles refer to the basic structure of society and that they are to govern the rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages. He also says that individuals begin from an original position of equality, which is the source of the two principles noted above. Rawls's views on justice are embodied in his conception of political life and the formation of government. For Rawls, the act of entering into a social contract does not entail setting up a particular form of government as it does for Locke and Rousseau. Rather, he sees the nature of the agreement as being on the questions of justice, with the contract concerning an agreement on how issues between members of society are to be decided. The principles agreed to are to regulate all further agreements and specify the types of cooperation that can be entered into and the forms of government that m
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the social level as the individual acts in a conscious way to be part of and enjoy the social level. For Mill, the individual has a moral duty to live according to the laws of the state, but this is not an absolute duty. The element of utility takes precedence so that some laws might be considered unjust because they would produce unhappiness rather than happiness. Some laws may be unjust, giving rise to the question of whether it is right to disobey it:
Some maintain that no law, however, bad, ought to be disobeyed by an individual citizen; that his opposition to it, if shown at all, should only be shown in endeavoring to get it altered by competent authority. . . Other persons, again, hold the directly contrary opinion that any law, judged to be bad, may blamelessly be disobeyed, even though it be not judged to be unjust but only inexpedient, while others would confine the license of disobedience to the case of unjust laws (Mill 43).
Mill himself would propose limits for criminal law and also for the moral force of social disapproval. The general test of law is utilitarian, based on the standard of whether the law tends to maximize pleasure and minimize pain (Kelly 340).
JOHN RAWLS
Rawls states in his seminal work, A T
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Approximate Word count = 4037
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)
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