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Essays about rawl's theory of justice
Essays about rawl's theory of justice
Essays about rawl's theory of justice
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I will talk about John Rawls’ philosophy and two major critiques made to his work by G.A. Cohen John Rawls was born in Baltimore in 1921. He was always concerned about poverty in the United States and wanted to change the society he lived in. He wrote his most famous book A Theory of Justice in 1971. This book is considered the most important book in American philosophy after the World War II. John Rawls philosophy is based on his vision of justice.
[3]In a thought experiment proposed by philosopher John Rawls, individuals are asked to imagine designing a just society under a veil of ignorance, a concept urging people to prioritize fairness and equality since they can't predict whether their social structures will advantage or disadvantage them. Similarly, [4]Dr. King stresses a fair and harmonious society in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," except that he focuses on solving existing problems rather than creating a whole new society. The most fundamental difference between Dr. King and John Rawls is that Dr. King confronts a real problem that exists in a real society. In contrast, John Rawls only proposes a theoretical solution.
This approach says that a society is in some sense is an agreement amount all those who make up the society. In the analogy Rawls shows his disagrements and gives solutions or what he things is a more just way of doing such things. Rawls starts off by saying “I believe that the contrast between the contract view and utilitarianism remains essentially the same in all these cases. There fore I shall compare justice as fairness with familiar variants of intuitionism, perfectionism, and utilitarianism in order to bring out the underlying difference in the simplest way.” Rawls strongly opposes utilitarianism.
In our society, people are either born rich and powerful, having the rights and opportunities that those who are born into lower-class would not have. So why should we live in a government system where we allow these inequities to happen? In Justice, Michael J. Sandel discusses John Rawls’ arguments over defining a just society. Rawls believes that “we should reject the contention that the ordering of institution is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on par with being unable to accept death.
Rawls’ idea of justice as fairness, which he presented in his book, “A Theory of Justice,” emphasizes the importance of equal opportunities and equal distribution of wealth and resources in society. This idea resonates with me because, as someone who values fairness and equality, I believe that everyone should have the same chance to succeed and live a fulfilling life. Rawls’ work has taught me to be more aware of societal inequalities and to work towards creating a fairer and more just
Contrastingly, Rawls views democracy as the only way a state can realise justice. Citizens all need a say in how they live their lives and this improves their political lives in the state. Hobbes’ sovereign rule is flawed as he believes each citizen will give up rights and obey a single ruler who has the final say in all decisions. This type of society will eventually crumble, be it by revolution or distrust in the sovereign’s ability; displaying the total failure of law and order while oppressed citizens rise and
Robert Nozick was a pupil of Rawls and rejected his teacher’s insistence on the need for governmental intervention in order to achieve a redistribution of wealth. In his book, Anarchy, State and Utopia, he said that a just society is the one based on individualism. The natural rights of the individual are to be considered inviolable, and each person may enjoy those rights subject only to certain moral side restraints concerning the rights of others. He proposes a “minimal State” whose functions are limited to the “night-watchman” protection against force, theft, and fraud, the enforcement of contracts, and a few other essentials but it will not become involved in any form of economic redistribution. It has come into existence by morally permissible
Throughout this course we have read about many different philosophers and their theories of justice. Utilitarianism, libertarianism, rawlsianism, and Sandal’s virtue of ethics are the main four theories of justice that we examined and compared to everyday life this course. Every single person has their own theory of justice and because of that; each of these theories have their positive aspects and each of them have their negative aspects or problems. After learning about the four different theories I have put some ideas together to create a theory of my own from the theories I learned. The first theory that we learned about in this course was utilitarianism.
John Rawls believed that if certain individuals had natural talents, they did not always deserve the benefits that came with having these abilities. Instead, Rawls proposed, these inherent advantages should be used to benefit others. Although Rawls makes an excellent argument on why this should be the case, not all philosophers agreed with his reasoning, especially Robert Nozick. Nozick believed in distributing benefits in a fair manner in accordance with the Entitlement Theory, which has three subsections: Just Acquisition, Just Transfer and Just Rectification.
Although, there are still some things we, as humans, are given naturally that we cannot just avoid or take away. These are our natural primary goods such as intelligence, health, or strength, and they sometimes do influence our social standing or success in life. This made Rawls’s argument instable, and in order to fix it he came up with the difference principle which states that such inequalities are acceptable, as long as they enhance the wellbeing of the least advantaged. The idea of being ambition-sensitive and endowment-insensitive are key to his overall position on distributive justice. For Rawls, distributive justice means a world
Rawls’ first principle of justice outlines that social institutions in a just society must aim for maximum equal liberty (Rawls, p. 82). His second principle, the difference principle, justifies inequality, but only when it maximally benefits those who are worse off (Rawls, pp. 65-66). Rawls ‘acknowledges that these principles are an oversimplification of distributive justice, but believes they should be applied to the basic structures of society (Rawls, p. 77). Rawls acknowledges that there needs to be regulations on when civil disobedience is justifiable.
J RAWLS, The Laws of Peoples-with the Idea of Public Reason Revisited, Harvard University Press: USA, 1999. John Rawls was an influential political philosopher and his publications are widely read. One of which is the Law of Peoples published in 1993 which is the subject of my study. In the Law of Peoples Rawls concerns of the general principles whereby one can uphold and be accept by the liberal people as well as the non-liberal society. “This principle is a standard for which can be useful in regulating the behavior of the citizens towards one and other.”
EQUALITY OR SUFFICIENCY? A FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY PERSPECTIVE I In contemporary debates on theories of justice, equality is often taken to be foundational for theories of justice. For example, Rawls’ theory of justice claims that there should be an equal distribution of primary goods (reference), Dworkin argues for an equal distribution of resources (reference), and others argue for equal distribution of opportunities for welfare (reference + names?).
THE PHILOSOPHY OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE SYSTEM Ashish Kumar Distributive Justice or Economic Justice or the Fair Share principle, as the name suggests, is basically concerned with the social and economic welfare of the citizens. It says that an equal society is that where there is a fair allocation of the material goods and services between all the sections of the society. John Rawls, the main theorist of Distributive Justice gives two basic principles of Fairness or Fair Share related to Distributive Justice. The Constitution of India, through Article 14, 15, 16, 38, 39, 39(A) enforces the principle of distributive justice. Distributive justice exists in a society where there exists no inequality, so the Indian constitution through these articles tries to remove the prevailing inequalities in the society.
Distributive justice by definition deals with the distribution of benefits and burdens across members of a society. Over time, philosophers have argued how these benefits and burdens should be distributed as what results from them fundamentally affects people’s lives. John Rawls, an American moral and political philosopher argued as a liberal “Justice as Equality” by means of his three principles of justice: the principle of equal liberty, equal opportunity and difference. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from harm by others, but also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty (Minogue, Girvetz, Dagger & Ball, 2018). Rawls believed that everyone in society should have had equal political rights, although social and economic inequalities existed, but only under the condition that they were to the maximum advantage of the least advantaged people in society.
