VI. Rawls and Equality
A society of free and equal persons
Last time, on Justice: Getting
What We Are Due…
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Redistributive Taxation Redux
 Can we justly tax Wilt Chamberlain to redistribute wealth
to others? Nozick says ‘no’, but…
 Objection 1: Others need the money more than
Chamberlain.
 Response: Maybe so, and this may motivate rich people
to give to charity. But stealing from the rich to give to the
poor is still stealing (i.e., a violation of property rights)
Someone may need my kidney more than I do, but that
doesn’t obligate me to give it to her.
 Objection 2: Chamberlain consented to taxation by
choosing to remain in a redistributive society. If that
society is democratic, he also had a voice in making the
tax laws to which he is subject.
 Response: Possibly true, but irrelevant. Violating
individual rights doesn’t become acceptable simply
because a democratic majority agrees to it.
(Compare: rights to freedom of expression, freedom of
religion)
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 Objection 3: Chamberlain is simply lucky—he didn’t do
anything to deserve his natural talents or the good
fortune of being born into a society that happens to
highly value basketball.
 Response: Hmmm. But if that’s true, then Chamberlain’s
talents are not really his (or not fully his). This is
politically dangerous; it undermines the idea of selfownership…
Rawls’s Theory of Justice
 For John Rawls (1921-220), the ‘luck’
objection provides one of two main
foundations for a theory of justice
 Like Hobbes and Locke, Rawls's theory is based on an
account of the social contract (though with some
different assumptions); as with Kant, Rawls’s view of the
social contract is inherently hypothetical.
 It’s output: An account of the fundamental principles of
justice for a just society composed of free and equal
persons…
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#1: The Original Position (OP) Argument
 Rawls: As a starting point, think of justice as the solution
to a problem: The fact that people (notoriously) disagree
about values
E.g., about the ‘nature of the good life’, about religion,
about morality, about who ought to get what and
why…etc., etc.
 Yet (recall Hobbes here) they also have an interest in
securing the benefits of cooperation (trust, security,
trade, contracts, etc.)…
“The Fact of Reasonable Pluralism”
 We may strongly disagree about what is good…
(You think that modesty is good, I think that sensual
pleasure is good; I want ecstasy, you want sobriety, etc.)
…but we may at least be able to agree on some minimal
account of what is right.
 Rawls: Society is a cooperative venture between free
and equal persons for their mutual advantage.
Cooperation makes life better since, in Rawlsian terms, it
increases the stock of primary goods…
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Primary Goods
Whatever it is rational to want, irrespective of
whatever else you want. (e.g., rights, income and
wealth, material resources, social bases of self-respect)
 The basic idea: We can identify an acceptable
conception of justice by asking what principles for the
distribution of primary goods it would be rational for
persons who think of themselves as free and equal
members of society to agree to.
 So: What principles of justice would people rationally
agree to? Principles that are fair…
Setup to the OP
 But how do we know what principles are fair? How do we
actually determine what reasonable people would accept
as fair?
 Rawls’s (rather clever) suggestion is that we can see for
ourselves what ought to count as fair principles by
performing a thought experiment.
Rawls: Imagine what principles would be chosen be
people in the following special (imaginary) situation…
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The Original Position (OP)
 Your task: To choose the principles of justice according to
which the “basic institutions” of society will governed. To
ensure impartiality, you are placed under special
conditions.
 Knowledge of your gender, ethnicity, social class, talents
and handicaps is temporarily hidden from you so as to
remove factors which might bias your decision in your
favour.
You do, however, retain non-biasing knowledge (social
scientific knowledge, knowledge about what human
beings need in order to live, etc.).
The Veil of Ignorance
 Persons in OP are thus said to be under a 'veil of
ignorance'. They do not know their interests, their place
in society, their personal characteristics or their
conception of the good.
I.e., they are mutually disinterested moral agents.
 When choosing the principles of justice for your society,
you have no way of knowing who you will turn out to be
once the veil of ignorance comes off: You could be a
winner or loser, a beggar or a millionaire, part of a
disadvantaged minority or a privileged majority…
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Perfect Procedural Justice
 The OP thought experiment is
meant to model (albeit imperfectly)
what Rawls calls “perfect procedural justice”
The basic idea: “I cut, you choose”
By choosing the right procedure, injustice can be made
self-defeating.
 And note how hypothetical agreement in the OP differs
from actual agreement: No one can get their way simply
because they are more powerful.
So What Won’t Persons in the OP Choose?
Rawls: Choosers will consider and reject various candidate
principles:
1. Feudal Aristocracy/Caste Systems: Will be rejected
as unfair since such systems make the distribution of
wealth, power, opportunity, etc. dependent on an
accident of birth.
When the veil comes off, I could turn out to be a noble
or a serf, but since I can’t know which, it would be
irrational to make my life prospects depend on arbitrary
facts about heredity.
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2. Utilitarianism: Will be rejected because, while it would
everyone as well-off as possible collectively, it doesn’t
respect persons as free and equal.
When the veil comes off, I could turn out to be the black
man in the Southern Sheriff case; I could turn out to be
a member of a minority group sacrificed for the wellbeing or the majority. (E.g., Christians being fed to the
lions for entertainment of Romans)
3. Libertarianism/Free Market Principles: Exponents of
individual rights and free markets (e.g., Nozick) typically
argue for equality of opportunity (a ‘level playing
field’) in a meritocracy (“to each according to what the
free market provides”).
From the OP chooser’s perspective, that is certainly
fairer than, say, a feudal society, but would we freely
choose a pure meritocracy under (hypothetical)
conditions of equality…?
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#2: Argument from Moral Arbitrariness
 …According to Rawls, we would not. Libertarian/free
market principles of justice distribute primary goods in a
way that is morally arbitrary.
 Chamberlain was lucky that he was born with basketball
talents (in the “genetic lottery”); was lucky to be born into
a society that happened to especially prize basketball.
Yes, he had to develop his talents (and successfully
exploit demand for them), but (pace Nozick) why should
he get to keep all of the wealth resulting rom a
fundamentally arbitrary distribution of talents and
opportunity?
 If Chamberlain can be said
to be entitled to his wealth, he
is entitled to it mainly in the
way that a lottery winner is
entitled to her winnings: i.e.,
by virtue of the rules that are already in place.
 Rawls: Since the natural distribution of talent and
opportunity is fundamentally arbitrary, no one morally
deserves their talents or their wealth.
(Compare: Galen Weston, David Thomson,
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 So what specifically will people in
the OP choose?
In other words, what are the
fundamental principles of justice,
according to Rawls?
Rawlsian Principles of Justice
The First Principle (The ‘Liberty’ Principle)
Each person has an equal right to the most extensive scheme of
equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of equal liberty
for all.
The Second Principle
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are
both: (a) to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged (the
“Difference Principle”) and (b) attached to offices and positions open
to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
Priority Rule
The two principles are in ‘lexical’ order. The first principle has priority
over the second; part (b) of the second principle has priority over part
(a)
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The Difference Principle
 Rawls: “The difference principle represents, in effect, an
agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as
a common asset and to share in the benefits of this
distribution whatever it turns out to be.”
 Some talented/ambitious/fortunate people may be
entitled to more, but only insofar as the use and
development of their resources benefits the leastadvantaged.
A Just Society
 Rawls: If the two principles
characterize (or very nearly
characterize) the “basic institutions”
of a society, then that society is just.
(a “well-ordered society”)
 The principles are the outcome of a fair choice
procedure (though it is not proper bargaining, since
individuals do not know their own interests), but the duty
to abide by them does not itself derive from the
contract…
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 Instead: Fair play. People who think of themselves as
free and equal citizens recognize that the rules are both
fair and beneficial and, accordingly, (at least ideally)
agree to be bound by them.
Rawls: “… the notion of a well-ordered society is an
extension of the idea of religious toleration.”
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