A Theory of Justice is probably the single most influential and important book in political thought written in English during the last 130 years. It is not just a book for philosophers. It is also read and studied by lawyers, judges, political scientists, public policy people, etc. If you want to have any understanding of political thought during the past 35 years, you MUST be familiar with the most important parts of this text. I know it is difficult to read. But it is worth it. Trying to understand contemporary western political thought without reading Rawls is about like trying to understand Christianity without reading the Bible.

Section 1: The Role of Justice

A. JUSTICE AS THE FIRST VIRTUE: Rawls tells us that justice is the "first virtue" of social institutions. It is the standard by which they are to be judged, just like truth is the standard by which statements are to be judged.

B. ANTI-UTILITARIANISM: each person possesses an inviolability that we cannot ignore simply to maximize social welfare (= total utility). The way to ensure this is by taking equal liberties "as settled," i.e., as inalienable and non-negotiable.

C. SOCIETY AS A COOPERATIVE ENDEAVOR FOR MUTUAL BENEFIT: "There is an identity of interests in social cooperation;" that is, we all benefit from being in society (as opposed to being in a state of nature). Thus, being in society creates benefits.

D. THE ROLE OF PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE: We need a set of principles for deciding how to distribute these benefits.

E. INTERLUDE: NOGGLE’S PARABLE OF THE ORCHARD.

F. A WELL-ORDERED SOCIETY: Definition of a well-ordered society as, roughly, a society in which people agree about what is just. This definition is important to Rawls's later work, but we probably won't get into it here. Because most societies are not well-ordered, they need some way to settle disagreements about what is just.

G. CONCEPT VERSUS CONCEPTION: The CONCEPT OF JUSTICE is: that benefits and burdens of cooperation are to be distributed properly. Various CONCEPTIONS OF JUSTICE are theories about what "proper" means here.

H. OTHER BASES FOR CHOICE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: This is a methodological point: while justice is the First Virtue of Social Institutions, we will not choose a theory of justice only on the basis of how fairly it distributes the benefits and burdens of cooperation. We will also want to look at some of the broader consequences of accepting a particular theory of justice before we decide whether to accept it. This methodological point is crucial for understanding the New Rawls, but we won't worry too much about it.

A. APPLICATION OF THE THEORY: Rawls's theory will apply primarily to the basic structure of society. That is, it will determine what the basic institutions should look like. For example: should we have private property, redistributive (progressive) income taxes, a capitalist economy, monogamous families, and so on. It will also tell us about what basic rights there should be. The theory will not "micro-manage;" that is, it will not tell us about specific laws, tax-rates, and so on.

B. AGNOSTIC ABOUT OTHER INSTITUTIONS: The theory is only meant to apply to the State. It may or may not work for private associations like clubs, families, etc.

C. STRICT COMPLIANCE THEORY: The theory is meant to apply only in societies characterized by "strict compliance." This is a somewhat utopian qualification which may (or may not) radically limit the application of the theory to actual societies.

D. HISTORICAL NOTES: The rest of the section (p. 9f) is more or less irrelevant for our purposes.

A. SOCIAL CONTRACT THEORY: Rawls announces his allegiance to the social contract tradition: justice equals fairness, and fairness is to be explained in terms of what a person could agree to "in an initial situation of equality" if they were free and rational. Each part of this formulation is important, especially the part about equality.

B. THE ORIGINAL POSITION: This "original position" plays the same role in Rawls's theory of Justice as Fairness as the State of Nature plays in traditional social contract theory.

C. THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE: Description of the Veil of Ignorance (VI) and the Original Position (OP).

D. THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE, CHANCE, AND THE TWO MORAL POWERS: The initial situation behind the VI is "fair between individuals as moral persons, that is, as rational beings ...." Three things to note here:

1. The VI is what it is because it has to be that way to be fair. It deprives us of any knowledge of those things about us that are true because of chance. Thus it prevents us from making decisions based on "natural advantages" that we may have due to luck and social circumstances.

2. Rawls claims that, for his purposes, behind the veil of ignorance, people have two main features. He calls these the "two moral powers." The first is the ability to set and pursue their own ends, to construct and implement a "rational plan of life," and to adopt and be guided by a "conception of the good." The second is to have and be guided by a "sense of justice." That means that they can internalize moral norms and act upon them.

3. THE TWO MORAL POWERS ARE THE MAIN THINGS THAT ARE RELEVANT BEHIND THE VEIL OF IGNORANCE. From behind the veil, we know almost nothing about ourselves and others except that we have the two moral powers. We also know basic facts about the social sciences and economics. (More detail will be added in a later section.)

E. THE ORIGINAL POSITION AS A LOCATION FROM WHICH FAIR AGREEMENTS CAN BE MADE: The basic idea then, is that because the OP is fair, anything you would agree to in it is also fair. In other words, if you object to anything you would have agreed to in the OP, then it must be because you would rather have chosen in some way that you could not have behind the VI. To do that, you would have had to exploit knowledge about your particular situation that is ruled out by the VI. And to do that, Rawls wants to insist, would be unfair. The basic idea then, is that any society you would choose in order to gain an advantage from your social status, gender, race, natural talents, conception of the good (e.g. your religion) would be unfair. The VI keeps you from choosing a set of institutions that would discriminate on the basis of any of the things the VI makes you forget. In that way, it guarantees, says Rawls, that the outcome is fair.

F. THE FOUR STAGE SEQUENCE: The OP is meant to be a decision procedure for setting very basic principles of justice. That is stage one. The idea is that once these principles are chosen, then a constitution can be formed that will embody those principles. This is stage two. The constitution will then set up a legislature, which will enact laws that accord with the constitution and therefore the basic principles of justice. That is stage three. Then, judges and administrators will implement those laws. This is stage four. (More details about these stages can be found in section 31, which is optional reading for this course.)

G. THE MOTIVATIONS OF THE PARTIES: What motivates people in the OP? They are mutually disinterested but not necessarily egoists. They do not know what their goals are, but they do want to try to achieve them.

H. A PRELIMINARY ARGUMENT AGAINST UTILITARIANISM: If you do not know who you will be in society, you will not want to agree to a system that allows one person to be sacrificed for the good of others, since you might turn out to be that one person.

I. A PRELIMINARY ARGUMENT FOR RAWLS’S TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE: Instead, he thinks we would agree to two main principles: basic equality of rights, and (what will later be called the Difference Principle) that social inequalities are only just if they help out the least fortunate.

J. PLAN OF THE OVERALL ARGUMENT: The argument has two parts: one is that the OP is a fair way to choose the principles to regulate the basic structure of society; the other is that the two principles he proposes would be chosen in the OP. These are separate arguments.

Section 4: Justification and the OP

A. BASIC CLAIM: Rawls claims that what makes a political system just is that it would be chosen in the OP. This section will be an initial step in justifying that claim. It is not the whole argument, but rather a kind of "preview" of the argument that will unfold in later sections.

B. THE OP AS AN UNBIASED VANTAGE POINT: The OP is a way of making vivid the idea that societies should not advantage or disadvantage persons because of race, gender, social position, religion, intelligence, wealth, etc. To ensure this, we imagine what it would be like to choose a society if we did no know our race, gender, financial status, religion, etc. If we do not know these things, we cannot "rig" our decision about what kind of society to adopt in such a way as to guarantee our own advantage.

C. A DEVICE OF REPRESENTATION: "The Original Position is at Hand:" The OP is just a metaphor, a device to help us envision a society that set up fairly. Pretending to be in the OP is thus simply a tool to help us think about what kind of society is fair and just.

D. REFLECTIVE EQUILIBRIUM. This idea is very important in meta-ethics and normative epistemology. But we won't talk in much detail about it here. Reflective equilibrium is a theory about how to figure out what moral principles are the right ones. Basically the rough idea is this: we start out with the most obvious, unquestionable moral principles we can think of. We then produce a theory that makes the best sense of them. If that theory conflicts with other (less obvious, more questionable) moral beliefs, then we will either adjust the theory or change our beliefs. Once we get the theory and our beliefs to match up, then we are in "reflective equilibrium." This applies to Rawls's theory int eh following way: we start out with certain unquestionable moral principles, e.g., a person is not more valuable just because he is white or a male or a Protestant. We then construct a theory that will fit this belief. This theory is the OP. We can then use this new theory to help us answer questions that we don't know the answers to, such as: what should the basic features of society be like. As I say, this is more meta-ethics and moral epistemology than I want to get into in much detail. If you don't understand it, you can either see me about it during office ours, or simply ignore it.

E. MOTIVATION FOR THE OP AND ITS RESULTS: FAIRNESS: Why should we care what we would agree to in the OP? The answer should be fairly obvious if you've been reading along, but nevertheless, many people don't get it. The answer is that the OP embodies conditions that are fair. If we care about what is fair (as most of us do), then we should care what we would agree to in the OP, because what we would agree to there is fair. Or so Rawls argues.

A. RAWLS’S PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE: In this section, Rawls is going to give us what he thinks is the answer to the question: "What would we choose in the OP?" A bit later he will give you a more detailed argument as to why we would choose these two principles in the OP.

B. AN INITIAL FORMULATION: The formulation of the Two Principles of Justice he gives here is not final. Throughout A Theory of Justice, he keeps fine tuning the formulation of the principles. Most of that tinkering will not concern us here. For the most part we can work with this initial statement (and I've simplified even more here).

C. THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE:

First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most freedom compatible with everyone else having that same amount of freedom

Second Principle: any social and economic inequalities (=inequalities in the distribution of primary goods) MUST be arranged so that:

(a) they are "attached" to positions and offices open to all (this is often called "fair equality of opportunity.")

(b) they are to everyone's advantage

D. THE DEMOCRATIC INTERPRETATION OF THE SECOND PRINCIPLE: In sections 12-14, Rawls considers various possible ways to further refine the second principle. He considers several different ways to "interpret" the second principle. The one he settles on (for reasons that are more technical than I want to get into in an undergraduate course) is called "Democratic Equality." According to the democratic interpretation–which is the interpretation that Rawls settles on–the Second Principle should be read the following way:

"The higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate." (65).

This refined interpretation of the second principle is called the Difference Principle.

E. THE FINAL FORM OF THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE: For convenience, here is the full set of the Two Principles of Justice (2PJ) in their final form:

First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most freedom compatible with everyone else having that same amount of freedom

Second Principle: any social and economic inequalities MUST be arranged so that they are:

(a) attached to positions and offices open to all ("fair equality of opportunity.")

(b) work to the benefit of the least advantaged group in society. (The Difference Principle)

F. IMPLICATIONS OF THE DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE: The Difference Principle (DP) implies that it is OK for some people to have more money or social power IF allowing the them to have the extra power or wealth is good for everyone including the least fortunate, AND if each person has a fair chance of getting the extra power or wealth.

G. THE IDEA OF THE REPRESENTATIVE MAN: DEFINING SOCIAL POSITIONS. In section 16, Rawls considers several ways to define social groups. This is important, since the DP claims that inequalities of wealth and income can only be fair if they benefit the least advantaged group in society. Whether or not something is to the advantage of a group will, of course, depend on how exactly one defines who is in that group. Rawls looks at several possibilities. He does not settle on one particular one, but he does indicate that either of two general methods would be acceptable:

(a) The first method would be simply to identify a relevant kind of economic "player" or "social position", such as that of an unskilled worker.

(b) The second method would be to identify the least advantaged class simply by relative income. The suggestion Rawls likes is to define the lowest economic class as the one which makes less than half the median income in the society.

H. BASIC STRUCTURE AS SUBJECT: These principles apply only to the basic structure (that is, the main institutions) of society. They are not to be used to micro manage the economy, or tax rates, or anything like that.

I. SERIAL ORDER: This is sometimes called "lexical" order or "lexical priority." If we cannot satisfy both of the principles at the same time, then we MUST satisfy the first one first. (Later he introduces some exceptions to this, mainly for under-developed societies, but we will for the most part ignore the exceptions.)

J. CONSEQUENCES OF THE SERIAL ORDERING OF THE PRINCIPLES: No one can (either voluntarily or involuntarily) trade off her political freedoms for more power, wealth, etc. We make sure we all have equal basic freedoms and basic rights, and then we worry about dividing up the other stuff.

K. PRESUMPTION IN FAVOR OF EQUALITY: The Two Principles of Justice are a way to make specific a much more general conception of justice (which will sometimes be called the "general conception of justice"): all social values should be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution is to everyone's advantage.

L. PRIMARY GOODS: Rawls introduces this term to cover all the things that the Two Principles of Justice are going to divide up. They are things like rights, opportunities, incomes, power, and so on. More on this in the section 15.

Section 15: Primary Goods

A. UTILITARIANISM AND MEASUREMENT OF HAPPINESS: This is one of those passages that is written largely in response to utilitarianism. Utilitarianism says to maximize happiness. One (among many) problems Rawls (and he's not alone in this) has with utilitarianism is that it is notoriously difficult to measure happiness. (The first page or so of this section is a complicated way of saying this.) Rawls thinks it is so difficult to measure happiness that his theory is not going to be a theory about how to divide up happiness.

B. WHAT JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS (RAWLS’S THEORY) WILL MEASURE: Now if we could measure happiness, you might think that the thing to do would be to formulate the difference principle in terms of happiness: we should all get equal shares of happiness except if inequality would make everyone (including the least happy) happier. Instead of dividing up happiness, Rawls wants his theory to divide up "primary goods," like wealth, political power, and so on.

C. EXAMPLES OF PRIMARY GOODS: Primary goods include three main classes of things:

1. Basic rights and liberties (what we would often call freedoms). These are the kinds of things that are protected in the Bill of Rights: Free speech, freedom of religion, etc., including the freedom to exercise the kind of individuality that Mill argued for. Generally Rawls refers to these in A Theory of Justice as "basic liberties."

2. Non-basic rights and prerogatives that are associated with specific positions in society, especially political positions. These would include the powers of a Congress person to vote on laws, the power of a judge to hear cases at law, etc.

3. Income and wealth.

D. THE PRIMARY GOODS AND THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE. Remember that according to Rawls, justice is mainly about dividing things up. The things to be divided up are, on his theory, the primary goods. However, the different kinds of primary goods are to be distributed according to different principles.

1. The First Principle of Justice applies to the primary goods in category 1 above (the basic liberties, rights, and freedoms). They are to be distributed equally, and in such a way that each person enjoys the greatest "amount" of them consistent with everyone else having the same amount.

2. The Second Principle of Justice applies to the primary goods in categories 2 and 3 above: the rights and prerogatives of political office, and income and wealth. These are to be divided up equally unless an unequal distribution benefits the least advantaged group in society. And in any case, each person must be given an equal fair opportunity to obtain these goods.

E. TWO FEATURES OF PRIMARY GOODS

1. First, they are strongly correlated to welfare. So in effect, they are a rough index of happiness, so that if we really did think we should divide up happiness, a good practical approach would be to divide up primary goods, because they tend to be correlated with happiness.

2. They are things that "the rational man wants whatever else he wants." That is, if we are in the OP, we cannot base our reasoning on our goals and life-plans, since we do not (because of the VI) know what those are. The primary goods are "all-purpose means." That is, they are means to whatever goals we might have.

F. PRIMARY GOODS AND THE ORIGINAL POSITION: Behind the Veil of Ignorance (VI), we don't know what our goals are. But we do know that we care about achieving them. Since we cannot try to directly ensure that the state we will choose will be one in which we can achieve our goals (since we don't know what they are), we do the next best thing: we try to make sure that we have a fair share of whatever will help us achieve our goals. These things, these all-purpose-means-to--goals-whatever-they-are, are the primary goods (money, power, etc.). So if you don't know what you'll want behind the VI, then it makes sense to try to secure a fair share of primary goods like money and power, since they will help you get what you want, whatever that turns out to be. Since this is true for everyone behind the VI, we will end up dividing up these primary goods.

G. SOME TECHNICAL OBJECTIONS: Rawls then goes on to examine a couple of possible objections to or difficulties with the idea of primary goods. None of them will concern us.

A. TWO GOALS OF THE SECTION: First, Rawls wants to show how the kind of society his theory endorses is "sufficiently egalitarian"–that is, that it treats people as equals. Second, Rawls wants to show that it does not end up justifying a "callous meritocracy." (A meritocracy is where people get ahead based only on their merit, e.g., their talent, intelligence, ambition, and so on. A "callous" meritocracy would be one where the losers in this competition would get left out in the cold. "Social Darwinism" would be one form of callous meritocracy.)

B. THE PRINCIPLE OF REDRESS: This principle is that "undeserved inequalities call out for redress." The difference principle allows for such redress. That is, if people have been harmed by things they did not deserve to have happen (like being born not very bright, or being sickly), and if this puts them in the least fortunate part of society, then the difference principle will help them out.. This "redress principle" holds that treating people equally actually tells you to pay more attention to the less fortunate.

C. THE DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE AND REDRESS: The difference principle "achieves some of the intent of" the principle of redress. (The DP "gives some weight to the considerations singled out by the principle of redress.") That is, it calls for allowing any inequalities that will help the least fortunate. Thus no inequality is permissible UNLESS it benefits the least fortunate. This means that social inequalities will in fact benefit anyone who has fallen behind in the great game of life due to a lack of talent, intelligence, etc.

D. TALENTS AND ABILITIES AS A COMMON ASSET TO BE SHARED BY THE COMMUNITY. In effect, the difference principle ends up treating the common pool of talents as a collective commodity. That is, we will not let you profit from your talents unless the less fortunate also get to profit.

E. JUSTICE AND NATURAL TALENTS AND ABILITIES. Rawls claims that the natural distribution of talents and abilities is neither just nor unjust. What is just or unjust is how society responds to that distribution.

F. THE DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE AND RECIPROCITY: At this point, the idea of justice being the distribution of the benefits of social cooperation is so important: the talented would only agree to this redistribution (the restriction that hey can only profit from their talents if the least fortunate also get to benefit) if we see the profits you can get from your talents as being one of the benefits of social cooperation. If there were no society, your talent for, say, playing bluegrass cello would not get you anything. It is only because we have society that we can have bluegrass cello concerns that you can charge for. And since your ability to profit from your talent depends on the existence of society, we (that is, society as a whole) have the right to decide how those profits will get used.

G. THE DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE AND FRATERNITY. The ideal of fraternity, as a political concept, means not wanting to have more at the expense of others. The DP conforms to this principle, since it is a refusal to allow some to be better off unless this gives the less well off more than they would have had otherwise. Thus, it is expresses a connection, a solidarity, between those who do better with those who do less well. The connection is that the fortunate will only benefit if it also benefits the less fortunate. This is an example of what could be a slogan for Rawlsian (as well as other Leftist versions of) Liberalism: We’re all in this together.

H. AGAINST CALLOUS MERITOCRACY: This fact means that a society which conforms to the 2PJ will not turn out to be a callous meritocracy. Such a meritocracy would be one in which the talented profit from their talents, and the untalented are left to fend for themselves. The society that conforms to the 2PJ, however, is one in which the talents of the talented are considered as a sort of common asset. The society recognized that the talented are "entitled" to them (in the sense that it would be wrong to try to take them away somehow), but that they do not "deserve" them. Such a society allows the talented to profit from their talents ONLY when their doing so makes things better for the LAG (least advantaged group–typically the group that is relatively untalented.)