Based upon the two readings, you are to conduct a comparative analysis of Rawls' Theory of Justice with Kantian Ethics. How are they similar? How are they different? Using both theories, is justice being served to all people in today’s United States, or does injustice still abound? Select a specific topic, example, or issue to explain your rationale. Please cite at least one additional source on this topic your analysis to support your interpretation of justice or injustice.
Readings
Political Theory for Global Ethics PDF
Widdows, Chapter 4, p. 77-97
These readings explore the concept of Rawls' justice.
Rawls' Theory of Justice (PDF)
Rawls' theory of justice was written in 1972. This critical study of it, written a year later by R. M. Hare, is an interpretation of Rawls' theory and thinking.
Rawls' Theory of Justice--1 R. M. Hare The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 91 (Apr., 1973), 144-155. Stable URL: http:/ /links .j stor .org/sici ?sici =0031-8094 % 28197304 %2923%3A91 %3C 144 %3 AR TOJ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W The Phil.osophical Quarterly is cun-ently published by The Philosophical Quarterly. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.j stor .org/joumals/philquar .html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. http://www.jstor.org/ Thu May 26 11:49:04 2005 ® 144 CRITICAL STUDY RAWLS' THEORY OF JUSTICE-F BY R. M. HARE A Theory of Justice. By JOHN RAWLS. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1971. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1972. Pp. xv + 607. Price £5.00, U.S. paperback, $3.95.) Any philosopher who writes on justice or on any other subject in moral philosophy is likely to propound, or to give evidence of, views on one or more of the following topics : (1) Philosophical me.tlwdology-i.e., what philosophy is supposed to be doing and how it does it. RawiB expre.sses some views about this, which have determined the whole structure of his argument, and which therefore need careful inspection. (2) Ethical analysi&-i.e., the meanings of the moral words or the nature and logical properties of the moral concepts. Rawls says very little about these, and certainly does not treat them as fundamental t.o his enquiry (51/10)2• (3) Moral mei,luxlology-i.e., how moral thinking ought to proceed, or how moral arguments or reasonings have to be conduct.ed if they are to be cogent. (4) Normative moral questions-Le., what we ought or ought not t.o do, what is just or unjust, and so on. I shall leave discussion of Rawls' views on (4) to the second, forthcoming part of this review, this first part being devot.ed to (1), (2) and (3). I shall argue that, through misconceptions about (1), Rawls has not paid enough attention t.o (2), and that therefore he has lacked the equipment necessary to handle (3) effectively; so that what he says about (4), however popular it may prove, is urumpport.ed by any firm arguments. (1) Rawls states quite explicitly how he thinks moral philosophy should be done : "There is a definite if limited class of facts against which conjec- 1Although the Editor has been kind enough to allow me to spread this review over two parts, I do not hope to explore in it all the convolutions of the book. I shall con- centrate on what seem.a most important. I feel excused from discu.ssing Rawls' treat- ment of liberty by my general agreement with an article which Professor Hart is to devote to this topic m the Chicago Law Review, and of which he has kindly shown me a draft. Of the many other people with whom I have discu.ssed the book, and who have kept my courage up during two readings of it, I should like especially to thank Mr. Derek Parfit, who seem.a to me to see deeper and more clearly into these problems than any of us. [The second part of this Critical Study is to appear in the July nwnher of this volume.] •References are to pages/lines of Rawls' text. RAWLS' THEORY OF .JUSTICE-I 145 tured principles can be checked, namely our considered judgments in reflec- tive equilibrium" (51/3). It is clear from the succeeding passage that Rawls does not conceive of moral philosophy as depending primarily on the analysiB of concepts in order to establish their logical properties and thus the rules of valid moral argument. Rather, he thinks of a theory of justice as analogous to a theory in empirical science. It has to square with what he calls " facts ", just like, for example, physiological theories. But what are these facts? They are what people will say when they have beBn thinking carefully. This suggestion is reminiscent of Sir David Ross.3 But sometimes (though not comiistently) Rawls goes farther than Ross. Usually he is more cautious, and appeals to the reflections of bien pensants generally, as Ross does (e.g., 18/9, 19/26). But at 50/34 he says, "For the purposes of this book, the views of the reader and the author are the only ones that count ". It does not make much practical difference which way he puts it; for if (as will certainly be the case) he finds a large number ofreaders who can share with him a cosy unanimity in their considered judgments, he and they will think that they adequately represent "people generally", and congratulat.e themselves on having attained: the truth. 4 This is how phrases like 'reasonable and generally acceptable' (45/16) are often used by philosophers in lieu of argument. Rawls, in short, is here advocating a kind of subjectivism, in the narrowest and most old-fashioned sense. He is making the answer to the question "Am I right in what I say about moral questions 1 " depend on the answer t.o the question" Do you, the reader, and I agree in what we say 1 ". This must be his view, if the comiidered judgments of author and reader are to occupy the place in his theory which is occupied in an empirical science by the facts of observation. Yet at 516/15 he claims objectivity for his principles. It might be thought that such a criticiBm can be made only by one who has rejected (as Rawls has apparently accepted) the arguments of Professor Quine and others about the analytic-synthetic distinction and the way in which science confronts the world. But this is not so. Even Quine would hardly say that scientific theories as a whole are to be tested by seeing what people say when they have thought about them (it would have been a good thing for medieval fl.at-earthers if they could be) ; but that is what Rawls jg proposing for moral principles. In order not to be unfair to Rawls, it must be granted that any enquirer, in ethics as in any other subject, and whether he be a descriptivist or a prescriptivist, is looking for an answer to his questions which he can accept. I have myself implied this in my Freedom and Reason, page 73 and else- where. The element of subjectivism enters only when a philosopher claims that he can " check" his theory agaimit his and other people's views, so "Cf. The Right and the Good, pp. 40 ff. •see 104/3•14 for a "considered judgment" with which many of ill! now would agree, but whic:h differs from the views of most writers of other periods than the present, and is not argued for. !46 lt. M. HARE that a disagreement between the theory and the views tells against the theory. To speak like this (as Rawls does constantly throughout the book) is to make the lruth of the theory depend on agreement with people's opinions. I have myself been so often falsely accused of this sort of subjectivism that it is depressing to find a self-styled objectivist falling as deeply into it as Rawls does-depressing, because it makes one feel that this essentially simple distinction will never be understood : the distinction between the view that thinking something can make it so {which is in general false) and the view that if we are to say something sincerely, we must be able to accept it (which is a tautology). Intuitionism is nearly always a form of disguised subjectivism. Rawls does not call himself an intuitionist ; but he certainly iB one in the usual sense. He says, "There is no reason t.o suppose that we can avoid all appeals to intuition, of whatever kind, or that we should try t.o. The practical aim is to reach a reasonably reliable agreement in judgment in order to provide a common conception of justice" (44/34, cf. 124/38). It is clear that he is here referring mainly to moral intuitions ; perhaps if he appealed only to linguistic intuitions it would be all right. He reserves the name 'intuition• iBt' for those (including no doubt Ross) who advocate a plurality of moral principles, each established by intuition, and not related to one another in an ordered structure, but only weighed relatively to each other (also by intuition) when they conflict. The right name for this kind of intuitionism would be' pluralistic intuitionism '. Rawls' theory is more systematic than this, but no more firmly grounded. There can also be another, non-pluralistic kind of intuitionist-one who intuits the validity of a single principle or ordered system of them, or of a single method, and erects his entire structure of moral thought on this. Sidgwick might come into this category-though if he were living today, it is unlikely that he would find it necessary t.o rely on moral intuition. ' Monistic intuitionism ' would be a good description of this kind of view. It might apply to Rawls, did it not suggest falBely that he relies only on one great big intuition, and only at one point in his argument. Un- fortunately he relies on scores of them. From 18/9 to 20/9 I have counted in two pages thirty expressions implying a reliance on intuitions : such expressions as ' I assume that there is a broad measure of agreement that ' ; ' commonly shared