John Rawl's Theory of Justice

The purpose of this essay is to critique John Rawls' theory of justice as a refutation of utilitarianism. It will consider how Rawls arrives at his principles of justice, and will consider whether Rawls' theory does refute utilitarianism. It will also consider whether Rawls' principles might be compatible with some form of utilitarianism, and how a utilitarian might critique Rawls' theory.

Rawls considers his theory of "justice as fairness" to be a type of "social contract" theory in the tradition of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. That is, just as the latter said, essentially, let us consider humans to be in a state of nature as a starting point, in order to ask how human society might have originated and evolved, so does Rawls propose a hypothetical starting position from which to deduce a theory of society, for, as he says (155), "A theory of justice depends upon a theory of society." All four of these philosophers propose essentially that humans have made at least an implicit social contract with one another as the basis for society.

Rawls says explicitly, "This original position is not, of course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice." Rawls was not, one may hope, implying that Locke, for example, thought of the "original" social contract as an actual historical event either. If Locke had, and

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ves without knowing how they would be affected. But his point is that if you were to propose a hypothetical situation to ordinary people (say, in a living room on a Saturday night, as a parlor game or what Einstein would have called a "thought experiment"), in which they were to create rules for running society and distributing worldly goods and privileges to members of that society, without knowing ahead of time what their own characteristics and position in that society would be, then you would get a set of rules intended to be fair and thus just to every member of the society. There might be some technical problems with wording, inadequate coverage, or internal contradictions among the rules, but such glitches could be fixed according to procedures (say, for a legislature) set up by yet other of the rules. There is an implicit trust here in the ability of people in general to be fair and rational given the chance to do so. Some might say this trust is unrealistic; others might not. One may note that Rawls' hypothetical starting situation also includes the implicit assumption that people's decisions about fairness will not be based on principles invented de novo, but will instead be informed by their extant principles of mor

Category: Philosophy - J