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John Rawls’ Theory of Justice
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This lecture notes discusses the key concepts of John Rawls' ethics or moral philosophy.
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John Rawls’ Theory of JusticeJohn Rawls’ theory of justice attempts to explain why clear social inequalities are unjust
and what a just society really is. As we can see, Rawls’ theory of justice as he developed
in his seminal work A Theory of Justice is both a work of ethics and politics. Hence, we
can glean from Rawls’ theory of justice some kind of an ethical theory. For one, in his A
Theory of Justice, Rawls attempted to address the problem of distributive justice. In
what follows, these notes will briefly sketch the key concepts of Rawls’ theory of justice.
Some Basic Principles of Rawls’ Theory of Justice
Rawls believes that a just society is one whose characteristics conform to normative
rules that everyone would agree. This explains why Rawls’ theory of justice begins by
introducing the fundamental principle that every individual is inviolable. Rawls writes:
“Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of the
state cannot override. Therefore, the rights secured by justice are not subject to political
bargaining or to the calculus of social interest.” From this fundamental principle, we can
draw the following implications.
First, for Rawls, life should not be sacrificed for the sake of the majority. For example,
suppressing the people’s right to speech and expression for the sake of economic
growth is morally wrong for Rawls. As we can see, Rawls’ theory of justice directly
attacks consequentialist ethics, especially its most notable representative, that is,
utilitarianism.
Second, it would appear that for Rawls, an erroneous theory is tolerable in the absence
of a good one. Thus, as Rawls would have us believe, an unjust law is better than no law
at all. In other words, an act of injustice is tolerable if and only if it is necessary to avoid
greater act of injustice. For example, it might be morally right to incapacitate, if not kill,
a notorious serial killer if it is the only way to stop him from killing more innocent
people.
And third, individual liberties should be restricted in order to maintain equality of
opportunity. For Rawls, restrictions through law preserves freedom in democracy. For
example, it is probably morally right to restrict people from owning more than 5
hectares of agricultural lot so that other people will have the chance to own a lot.
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