John Rawls (1921–2002)

 

John Rawls was an American philosopher whose work focused on justice, equality, political freedom and the organisation of a democratic society. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1921 and later taught at Cornell University, MIT, Oxford and Harvard, where he spent much of his academic career. His work became one of the major reference points in twentieth-century political philosophy. 

Rawls became especially concerned with a question that had troubled political philosophy for a long time: What principles should govern a society if its members are to be treated as free and equal? His answer developed into what he called “justice as fairness.”

His most important book, A Theory of Justice (1971), begins with a hypothetical situation called the original position. Rawls asks us to imagine people deciding on the basic principles of their society without knowing what position they themselves will occupy within it. They do not know whether they will be rich or poor, powerful or disadvantaged, highly educated or not, or what their religion, gender, social class or particular conception of the good will be. This restriction is called the veil of ignorance. 

The point of the thought experiment is to prevent people from designing rules that favour their own particular circumstances. If nobody knows where they will end up in society, the rules have to be considered from a more impartial position. Rawls treated the original position as a thought experiment or device of representation, rather than as an actual historical event. 

From this starting point, Rawls develops his two principles of justice. The first gives each person an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties compatible with the same scheme for everyone else. These liberties include political rights and freedoms of thought, conscience and association.

The second principle concerns social and economic inequalities. Rawls argues that inequalities can exist only under conditions that preserve fair equality of opportunity and that make the greatest benefit available to the least advantaged members of society. This second part is known as the difference principle. 

Rawls therefore does not define equality as requiring everyone to have exactly the same income or resources. His concern is with the basic structure of society: its major political, legal and economic institutions and the way they distribute rights, opportunities and resources. Justice has to be built into these institutions rather than understood only as individual acts of charity.

An important concept in his theory is primary social goods. These are things that people generally need whatever their particular goals in life may be. Rawls includes rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, and income and wealth among them. 

Rawls later revised some parts of his theory and developed a more explicitly political conception of justice in Political Liberalism (1993). He recognised that citizens in a modern democratic society are likely to hold very different religious, philosophical and moral beliefs. The question, then, is how people with these disagreements can still share a common political framework.

His answer includes the idea of overlapping consensus. Citizens may disagree deeply about religion, morality or the meaning of a good life while still agreeing on certain political principles. Political legitimacy can therefore rest on principles that people with different comprehensive worldviews can reasonably accept. 

Political Liberalism also introduces the idea of public reason. When discussing fundamental constitutional questions and matters of basic justice, citizens and public officials should offer reasons that other citizens can reasonably engage with as free and equal members of the political community.

Rawls also addressed the problem of stability. A just society cannot depend entirely on people acting justly only because they are forced to do so. Its institutions need to generate a political culture in which citizens can develop a sense of justice and regard the basic principles of the political order as worth supporting. 

His later book The Law of Peoples (1999) extended some of his political ideas to international relations. Rawls considered principles governing relations between peoples, including ideas about human rights, political independence, cooperation and relations between different kinds of societies. 

Rawls's theory generated substantial criticism. Robert Nozick argued that Rawls's principles gave too much authority to patterned distributions of resources and insufficient weight to individual holdings and voluntary exchange. Amartya Senquestioned whether concentrating on primary goods is enough, since people with similar resources may have very different abilities to use them. Michael Sandel, Michael Walzer and other communitarian thinkers questioned Rawls's highly abstract picture of the individual and argued that people's identities and values are shaped by their social communities.

Rawls's work nevertheless changed the terms of debate about distributive justice, equality, liberalism and democratic legitimacy. Later political philosophers have developed, criticised or revised his arguments in many different directions.

Main ideas associated with John Rawls

Justice as fairness: Principles of justice should be acceptable to free and equal citizens under fair conditions.

Original position: A hypothetical situation in which people choose principles of justice without knowing their own future position in society. 

Veil of ignorance: The parties do not know facts such as their class, wealth, race, gender, abilities or particular conception of the good. 

Two principles of justice: Equal basic liberties for all, together with fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle concerning inequalities.

Difference principle: Social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they benefit the least advantaged. 

Primary social goods: Rights, liberties, opportunities, powers, income and wealth that people generally need to pursue their different aims. 

Political liberalism: A democratic society can remain stable even when citizens hold different religious and philosophical views.

Overlapping consensus: People with different comprehensive beliefs can nevertheless agree on a shared political conception of justice. 

Public reason: Political decisions concerning fundamental questions should be supported by reasons that citizens can reasonably consider together.

Major works

• A Theory of Justice (1971)
• Political Liberalism (1993)
• Political Liberalism: Expanded Edition (1993; revised later)
• The Law of Peoples (1999)
• Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001)
• Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (2000)
• Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (2007, posthumous)

Rawls died in 2002. His central problem can be put simply: how should the basic institutions of a democratic society be arranged when citizens are free and equal but have different abilities, circumstances, values and goals? His theory of justice as fairness attempts to answer that question through the ideas of the original position, veil of ignorance, equal liberty, fair opportunity and the difference principle