John Rawls Social Justice

[3]In a thought experiment proposed by philosopher John Rawls, individuals are asked to imagine designing a just society under a veil of ignorance, a concept urging people to prioritize fairness and equality since they can't predict whether their social structures will advantage or disadvantage them. Similarly, [4]Dr. King stresses a fair and harmonious society in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," except that he focuses on solving existing problems rather than creating a whole new society. The most fundamental difference between Dr. King and John Rawls is that Dr. King confronts a real problem that exists in a real society. In contrast, John Rawls only proposes a theoretical solution.

I will talk about John Rawls’ philosophy and two major critiques made to his work by G.A. Cohen John Rawls was born in Baltimore in 1921. He was always concerned about poverty in the United States and wanted to change the society he lived in. He wrote his most famous book A Theory of Justice in 1971. This book is considered the most important book in American philosophy after the World War II. John Rawls philosophy is based on his vision of justice.

Rawls’ idea of justice as fairness, which he presented in his book, “A Theory of Justice,” emphasizes the importance of equal opportunities and equal distribution of wealth and resources in society. This idea resonates with me because, as someone who values fairness and equality, I believe that everyone should have the same chance to succeed and live a fulfilling life. Rawls’ work has taught me to be more aware of societal inequalities and to work towards creating a fairer and more just

Rawls was not happy whit the original arguments about what makes a social institution just. The utilitariam argument says that societies should pursue the greatest good for the greatest number. This argument has many problems, excpecially that it seems to be consistant with the belief of majorities over minorities. The institution argument holds that human intuit what is wright or wrong by some innate moral sense. Rawls attempts to provide a good account of social justice through the social contract approach.

In this essay, it is argued that to achieve a truly fair conception of justice that could be applied to social and economic structure of society is only possible from the initial position of equality that ensures a complete dissociation from any knowledge about personal position in the society. Such a conception of justice leads to a just society that equally distributes the benefits of every member of such a community (Rawls, 1999: 3-19). This essay first elaborates on Rawls’s understanding of justice. The next part addresses why and how the veil of ignorance is crucial for the original position of equality and the importance of difference-principle emerging from this position.

In our society, people are either born rich and powerful, having the rights and opportunities that those who are born into lower-class would not have. So why should we live in a government system where we allow these inequities to happen? In Justice, Michael J. Sandel discusses John Rawls’ arguments over defining a just society. Rawls believes that “we should reject the contention that the ordering of institution is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on par with being unable to accept death.

People have long considered how to appropriately structure society in order to provide the most justice and equality for all. Governments have been attempting to implement constitutions that provide these justice. However, before an emerging state can provide a just constitution, the theories of justice behind the constitution must be valid. Although Rawls has created a theory of justice that can detect injustice well, the rational falls short of persuasive as it disregards interpersonal comparisons of utilities, alternatives to the maximin strategy, and the end result principle. Before we can understand what Rawls’ theory of justice is, we must first understand the situation in which he imagines the theory of justice being initiated for society -- he calls this the original position.

Same-sex marriage is a controversial topic that surrounds the case of Obergefell v Hodges. Generally, liberals believe that marriage is the union between two people who love each other, regardless of their gender and sexual orientation. Liberals support same-sex marriage and believe that everyone should have the right to marry; forbidding people this right violates their civil rights. On the other hand, conservatives strongly believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Conservatives protest against same-sex marriage because they reason that forcing people to recognize same-sex marriages violates the morals and religions of a large population of people who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.

Paper 337. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses _2/337 Bharadwaj’s essay describes fairness and social justice based on individual deservingness and how fairness is different from social justice. She asserts that fairness is about input-based deservingness and results in outcomes based on proportionality while social justice includes deservingness based on common group membership and results in outcomes that the group have relatively equal. Bharadwaj explained fairness as individual deservingness, which is different from social justice as fairness.

Political theorists, whether they are realists, or liberalists, over the centuries, have come into conflict over what they believe to be the utmost important task of the state. Hobbes believes the most important task of the state is to ensure law and order, rooting his argument in the idea of a sovereign ruler. On the other hand, Rawls, a modern theorist, firmly believes that a state should focus on realising justice within their society. While a utopian society cannot be achieved by either of these theories, I will highlight why Rawls was right in his assumption that the main focus of a state should be to ensure justice for all within their nation, through analysing and comparing the conflicting arguments of Hobbes and Rawls.

Martin Luther King being among them. All of these great thinkers stated that there must be a wrong in need of repair to call for such drastic actions. Rawls, in The Justification of Civil Disobedience, talks of what makes these wrongs or unjust laws by talking about what creates a just law. His view of just was routed strongly in equality which means unjust laws would be something that by nature or in application deviates from the equal treatment of people. Because the government is often dictated by the will of the majority King and Rawls would agree that injustice effects the minority of a society heavily and unequally.

J RAWLS, The Laws of Peoples-with the Idea of Public Reason Revisited, Harvard University Press: USA, 1999. John Rawls was an influential political philosopher and his publications are widely read. One of which is the Law of Peoples published in 1993 which is the subject of my study. In the Law of Peoples Rawls concerns of the general principles whereby one can uphold and be accept by the liberal people as well as the non-liberal society. “This principle is a standard for which can be useful in regulating the behavior of the citizens towards one and other.”

John Rawls believed that if certain individuals had natural talents, they did not always deserve the benefits that came with having these abilities. Instead, Rawls proposed, these inherent advantages should be used to benefit others. Although Rawls makes an excellent argument on why this should be the case, not all philosophers agreed with his reasoning, especially Robert Nozick. Nozick believed in distributing benefits in a fair manner in accordance with the Entitlement Theory, which has three subsections: Just Acquisition, Just Transfer and Just Rectification.

Distributive justice by definition deals with the distribution of benefits and burdens across members of a society. Over time, philosophers have argued how these benefits and burdens should be distributed as what results from them fundamentally affects people’s lives. John Rawls, an American moral and political philosopher argued as a liberal “Justice as Equality” by means of his three principles of justice: the principle of equal liberty, equal opportunity and difference. Liberals typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from harm by others, but also recognize that government itself can pose a threat to liberty (Minogue, Girvetz, Dagger & Ball, 2018). Rawls believed that everyone in society should have had equal political rights, although social and economic inequalities existed, but only under the condition that they were to the maximum advantage of the least advantaged people in society.

Benjamin Kielhold Phil-220 Prompt 3 John Rawls was a twentieth century philosopher who authored a thought provoking book known as, A Theory of Justice. He was heavily influenced by past philosopher’s such as: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for motivation and ideas for his beliefs while modeling this theory. The basis of his theory is the concept of equality and freedom directly clashing. Rawls argues strongly of two general principles for his theory of justice that help structure the world that we live in. He uses these principles coupled with a veil of ignorance to imagine how the rules of society should be structured in a fair and non-biased manner.