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Book No. – 3 (Political Science)
Book Name – A History of Political Thought: Plato to Marx (Subrata Mukherjee & S. Ramaswamy)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. CRITIQUE OF UTILITARIANISM
1.1. Social Contract
1.2. Two Principles of Justice
1.3. Liberty and its Priority
1.4. Difference Principle and Notion of Equality
1.5. Two Conceptions of Justice and Notion of Primary Social Goods
1.6. Institutional Framework of the Well-ordered Society
1.7. Natural Duties and Political Obligation
1.8. Civil Disobedience
1.9. Later Writings
2. CONCLUSION
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LANGUAGE
John Rawls
Revival of the Classical Tradition
Table of Contents
- A Theory of Justice is a significant work in political and moral philosophy, widely regarded as a crucial text in modern philosophy.
- Political philosophers must either work within Rawls’ theory or provide explanations for rejecting it (Nozick, 1974).
- Rawls’ theory has both simplicity and complexity, likened to the grandeur of a Gothic Cathedral (Chapman, 1975).
- Rawls’ work is considered a comprehensive effort to justify a socialist ethic (Bell, 1973).
- His A Theory of Justice (1971) exemplifies the contractual approach to liberal justice.
- The theory is a powerful, systematic defense of a new form of egalitarianism that balances individual liberty.
- Hampshire (1972) praised it as the most substantive contribution to post-Second World War political philosophy.
- Rawls’ work has been translated into many languages, indicating its wide influence.
- The theory has had immense impact on contemporary political philosophy, with a “Rawls industry” of commentaries (Ryan, 1985).
- Rawls first outlined his ideas in Justice as Fairness (1957) and further developed them in Political Liberalism (1993) and The Law of Peoples (1999).
- The evolution of Rawls’ theory involved subtle alterations, responding to critiques but maintaining core doctrines (Barry, 1973).
- Rawls’ theory coincided with civil rights movements, anti-Vietnam war protests, and issues of social justice in the 1960s-70s.
- Rawls’ justice principles reflect common sense and moral convictions, aiming for a democratic society based on justice as the “first virtue.”
- Rawls considered justice as central to social institutions, with efficiency and stability being important but secondary (Rawls, 1972).
- Initially applied to practices, Rawls later focused on the basic structure of the well-ordered society.
- Rawls’ conception of justice was pure procedural, differing from perfect and imperfect procedural justice.
- In a pure procedural approach, fair procedures lead to fair outcomes, regardless of the result.
- Justice is about the rules governing a social practice, not about evaluating individual situations through criteria like need or desert.
- Rawls argued that rational agents, under certain conditions, would choose principles of justice consistent with distributive justice and moral acceptability.
- Barry (1995) viewed Rawls’ theory as a significant contribution to social justice due to its focus on rational justification for deviations from equality.
- Rawls favored equality and argued against merit or desert in determining justice outcomes.
- He rejected merit and desert because skills, talents, and endowments are socially constructed products.
- Rawls did not seek to equalize human beings or disregard individual talents but emphasized the moral priority of meeting the fundamental needs of all, especially the least advantaged.
- In his view, inherited advantages and genetic traits should serve society, particularly those in need.
CRITIQUE OF UTILITARIANISM
- Rawls developed a concept of justice aligned with liberty and reciprocity, contrasting with utilitarianism, a dominant moral and political doctrine since the 18th century.
- He rejected classical utilitarianism of Bentham and Sidgwick, developing an alternative based on Kantianism.
- Utilitarianism was criticized by Rawls for being individualistic and ignoring distinctions between persons, despite acknowledging each individual’s view of good.
- Rawls argued that utilitarianism’s focus on the greatest happiness of the greatest number ignored the interests of the least advantaged.
- Rawls questioned why greater gains for some should compensate for the losses of others or why violating liberty for a few should be justified by benefits for many.
- In utilitarianism, some individuals are treated as means to an end, whereas justice as fairness treats persons as ends in themselves.
- Rawls saw the principle of utility as incompatible with social cooperation among free and equal individuals and the idea of reciprocity.
- Utilitarianism did not distinguish between liberties and rights versus the desire to increase aggregate social welfare.
- In justice as fairness, basic liberties are prioritized and cannot be subject to political bargaining or social interests.
- Utilitarianism is a teleological doctrine, while justice as fairness is a deontological theory, emphasizing the right over the good.
- Rawls rejected the sympathetic spectator concept in utilitarianism, which blends individual desires into one system.
- In utilitarianism, the impartial sympathetic spectator looks at society from a neutral standpoint, while in justice as fairness, parties are mutually disinterested.
- Rawls argued that his two principles of justice were more in line with common sense than utilitarianism, aligning more with intuitionism.
- Intuitionism accepts irreducible first principles but had defects in explaining why principles should be followed or how to resolve conflicts between them.
- Rawls addressed these defects with a contractual hypothesis, providing a method to arrive at principles of justice without relying solely on intuitionism.
- The contractual hypothesis resolves disputes over whether justice should be based on merit or need, leading to the criterion of need.
- Rawls criticized J.S. Mill’s utilitarianism for failing to secure individual rights despite its revisions, as Mill still derived rights from maximizing good.
- For Rawls, individual liberty and dignity had independent status and could not be derived from the maximization of social good.
- Mill failed to show how the distributive ideal could fit into an aggregative one, assuming that maximizing total income was sufficient for justice.
- Sen argued that Rawls and Bentham represented two different but incomplete aspects of interpersonal comparison, with Rawls focusing on welfare levels and Bentham on gains and losses.
- Rawls maintained the goal of maximizing social welfare but emphasized the separateness of persons, ensuring that none were viewed as means to societal ends.
- Rawls‘ theory aimed to ensure that neither the well-off nor the worst-off made undue sacrifices disproportionate to their benefits.
- Rawls’ theory was a right-based theory of justice, advocating equal rights, and offering an independent basis for defending individual rights, attracting liberals.
- Rawls rejected perfectionism, which values certain human activities (like knowledge and achievement) as intrinsically good, regardless of happiness or pleasure.
- Perfectionism was seen as a hierarchical moral theory, preferring the extraordinary, whereas Rawls’ egalitarian principles advocated for equal dignity for all.
- Rawls’ contracting agents chose greatest equal liberty for everyone, emphasizing equality without implying all people’s activities and ends have the same worth.