John Rawls, A Theory of Justice

Résumé du document

John Rawls (1921-2002) was a major political philosopher of the twentieth century. He occupied several teaching positions in Harvard, Princeton, Cornell and Oxford universities. In 1971, he published his most famous work - 'A Theory of Justice'. As one of the most commented and ambitious books of social philosophy of the second part of the twentieth century, it aims to show the principles of social justice and why they can only be guaranteed in a liberal society which partly redistributes wealth and income for the benefit of the less advantaged of the society. The 'Rawls-event' illustrates what Michel Foucault calls 'returns of subject knowledge' as Rawls claims to follow the Kantian tradition and aims to use the social contract theories against the dominant doctrine of his analytical field: utilitarianism.

The goal is twofold. On one hand, justice as fairness proposes to conciliate the modern notion of freedom, as it is defined by political liberalism, and the requirement of equality. On the other hand, it's necessary to define principles which would be independent enough from any 'comprehensive' philosophical doctrine, in order to figure out the pluralism of democratic societies. Justice is the first virtue of a social institution, just as truth is for a system of thought. The former, indeed, deals with the problem of the distribution of obligations and benefits created by social cooperation, acknowledging that life within a society creates mutual advantages for its participants as well as conflicts concerning the repartition of these benefits. A public conception of justice has for its basic postulate that idividuals have personal interests but that they also acknowledge the necessity for them to reach an agreement both on their respective duties and rights and on the distribution of common advantages. The conception of justice which is adopted affects the good coordination, the efficiency and stability of social life. Firstly, it is possible to admit that a given conception of justice is superior to another one when its adjunct consequences are preferable.

Extraits

[...] Robert Nozick elaborated the anti-thesis of the Theory of Justice : only a minimal state, which takes care of the functions of defense and police, is moraly justified ; and distributtive justice is satisfied as soon as the individual has a right to acces his property, that is when it's the fruit either of its labor or of a legal exchange with someone who had access to this right. In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Nozick made a systematical criticism of the Theory of Justice. [...]

[...] The problem of distributive justice depends on the choice of a social system. This one should be compatible with formal justice, that is it should determine a procedure whose outcome could be accepted no matter what it may be. This social system can in principle be socialist or liberal. However, it is impossible not to use the market because the system exludes the questionning of its principles, which make planification difficult and that we start from the presupposition that there is a limit to the wideness of social and altruist motivations. [...]

[...] For instance, one could tolerate that an entrepreneur raises more profits than others if its activity benefits also to non-qualified workers and to the society in general. It should be noted that this difference principle can accept a lowering in the standard of living of favored individuals when the social structure is unjust. The principle of equal opportunities can be applied thanks to pure procedural justice. Thus, the outcome of the distribution is left aside and only the fairness of the mechanism matters. [...]

[...] Hobbes' thesis is validated. We arrive then to the reformulation of the first principle of justice : everyone should have an equal right to the maximal system of fundamental freedoms which is in accordance with the granting of such a system to others. The priority rule of freedom requires that an equal restriction applied to everyone of a freedom is acceptable only when it reinforce the overall system of liberties, and that an inequal restriction of freedom should be tolerated only if it benefits to those who have the least liberty. [...]

[...] Finally, judgements concerning the fundamental principles of justice remain subject to the limitations of our moral sensibility. A theory of justice should supply a frame which could guide and facilitate these moral judgements, inevitably intuitive. When starting to analyze the principles of justice, a distinction between the principles which are applied to public institutions and those which are applied to individuals in particular circumstances. An institution can be seen in two ways : either as an abstraction, or as a concrete realisation of the actions specified by the rules of the institution. [...]