Lecture 16 & 17 - The Rawlsian Social Contract & Distributive Justice and the
Welfare State
Political philosophy would not have been were one would have expected to find the most important
philosophers of the 20th century in the 1950s.
Social Contract 2 problems:
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No grounding in natural law that people accepted
Never actually was a social contract – Aristotle right; never was a pre-political condition
Answers:
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Replace natural law with Kant as placeholder
Work with hypothetical contracts not actual contracts; what would people agree to, not what
did people agree to under certain specified conditions
Nozick grows directly out of Locke
Rawls did not have theories across many spectra like Enlightenment polymaths – doesn’t have a
metaphysics, or mathematics, etc.
A Theory of Justice (1971)
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Original position – Rawls’ version of hypothetical social contract (veil of ignorance; basic mode
of reasoning is comparative)
o Actually not important to his theory
 He structures a hypothetical choice, and then gives one certain kinds of
information to get one to choose what he wants.
o What’s the fairest way to cut a cake?
 The person cutting gets the last piece
 They want the pieces even sized so they get their fair share
 Assumptions:
 We think dividing the cake equally is the right way; we devised a system
where the cake can be equally divided
o What if we don’t want it equally divided?
 What if someone in room was starving or diabetic
o Introduce information to question inherent goodness of
equality
 Presumes equality is good and you want person to
choose it
 People will behave in self-interested way
 NOT to say bad assumptions but not their existence
o
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Rawls’ OP has distributive outcome he wants to convince you is a good thing. So he
creates a hypothetical to lead you to choose it
o WHAT IF YOU CAN’T USE YOUR FREE-WELL TO INFLUENCE HOW YOU TURN OUT??
WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY DO YOU DESIGN THEN??
 So your designing the perfect society behind the veil and it’s a non-libertarian
universe
 For Hobbes the property of rationality would ensure someone of rationality
would choose the social contract. In this ways he is Hobbesian
He wants to show us principles and information which would cause one to desire to live in the
society he describes after he proposes the OP, from behind the veil of ignorance.
o Then he goes back and says in the light of some new information, you have rationally
prevented yourself from returning to a former state if you’re a rational agent
OBJECTIVIST PROBLEM IS ALLOWS PEOPLE TO BE USED IN THE NAME OF UTILITY
MAXIMIZATION.
o LARGE DEGREE OF INTERPERSONAL JUDGEMENTS OF UTILITY
SUBJECTIVIST VERSION DOESN’T SEEM TO ALLOW ANY INTERPERSONAL JUDGEMENTS OF
UTILITY.
Rawls says be Obj about some things Subj about others; let’s focus on resources and not utility
o The state acts with blunt instruments
 Govt with a utilitorometer under your tongue to find one’s utility
Focus on basic resources in society that the state could have some impact on
o Instead of various competing of utility or welfare; let’s change subject
o Resources he’s interested in have the qualities:
 A) State can actually deal with them
 B) Instrumental value to people no matter what they turn out to want in life
o Resourcism
The General Conception of Justice
o “All social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of
self-respect – are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all,
of these values is to everyone’s advantage.”
Primary
Goods
Liberties
Principles of Justice
Freedom of speech, religion, association and to participate in democratic
politics, etc.
First Principle
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of
liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
o From behind veil of ignorance how do we reason about whether
or not we want an established religion?
o Stand-point of most adversely affected; if they would
accept it presumably everybody else would
o
Opportunit
ies
“The standpoint of justice is the standpoint of the most
disadvantaged person” – Not because we feel badly
(bleeding heart) for that person but because we want a
universalizable principle.
o Would you rather be a fundamentalist in a regime where there is
no established religion? Or would you rather be the non-believer
in a regime with an established religion?
o Rawls says the fundamentalist in a non-religious regime is
more free than the non-believer in the same regime
o NOTE: This is not neutral! It should give the most extensive
religious freedom to the person who is most disadvantaged.
o Person who is cutting the cake is the disadvantaged
o Standpoint of Justice is the standpoint of the most adversely
affected (univseralizable idea) – if you can affirm a principle even
from the standpoint of those people most adversely affected by it,
you can affirm from every other conceivable standpoint.
Second Principle (arranged by Lexical Ranking)
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair
equality of opportunity,
What if there was a principle that gave a small benefit to the person at the
bottom but at a very high cost to the middle class, would one choose it?
o What’s the likelihood you will be the one at the bottom?
o Rawls response(s)
o Grave risks - No necessary relationship between the
overall level of economic development and the
distribution of income and wealth
 Thus even if there is rare scarcity you might turn
out to be that person; probability of being that
person is low, but costs are high.
Chain connection – If you help person at bottom it will have a chain
reaction where it helps the person above them and so on; multiplier
effect. (May want to ignore; he’s not trying to make policy
recommendations, but he is thinking about a theory of justice)
Lexical Ranking
 Values (liberty, opportunities and income and wealth) will come
into conflict with each other.
 The Lexical Ranking is a way of prioritizing which values take
precedence in a given situation
Income
and
Wealth
(a) To the greatest benefit of the least advantaged individual (maximin;
maximizing the minimum share).
The Difference Principle (The Maximin Principle of Welfare Economics)
o Maximize the minimum share
o
o
2 individuals’ possibilities A and B – graph is the status
quo (A has more than B)
Point m is perfect equality – then go east
 Everything in the shaded area is ‘Rawls Superior’
to the status quo (notice there a multiple Lshaped curves which are Rawls Superior)
 L-shaped indifference curve
 Down through the status quo and then
turn right
 l – m is where A has the least
 Moving right increases the size of the minimum
share
 Y-axis to point x is the minimum and you don’t
want it to get smaller
 So if we went to i from j we can draw a new Lshaped indifference curve
o
o
o
o
Everything that is Pareto superior (l,x,h) is Rawls preferred
 So if it was true that the best way to help the
person at the bottom is to have market
transactions only; regardless of whether is
market-based or redistribution based
 But if there were other ways that were Pareto undecidable (h,n,g,x) we would do those; regardless
of whether is market-based or redistribution
based
Are the differences between us the result of nature or
nurture?
 Charles Murray – differences between us are
genetic
 Rawls – Differences between us may be genetic,
but that’s just luck. No one chose their genes.
Suppose they are environmental though – same –
luck; no one chooses their family or country. We
are born behind the veil of ignorance.
 The differences between us are morally
arbitrary regardless of nature versus
nurture
From the standpoint of justice we want to maximize the
share of the person at the bottom
Moral Arbitrariness
o
o
o
Weakness of the will (lazy) is arbitrary; as is the person of strong work ethic (hard
worker).
Determinism isn’t the same thing as an abdication of moral responsibility
o The differences that flow from our strength of will are not deserved
Is Rawls an argument for equality?
o
o
o No its an argument for The Difference Principle
Minimum-pay for workers regardless of type of work; capacity to work is morally
arbitrary.
o There should be the highest sustainable-minimum income
In a moral sense we don’t care who did the work; because the capacity for work brings
since of moral valiance.