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1 Chapter 1 : John Rawls - Wikipedia Review of the hardback:'this is a collection of authoritative essays on utilitarianism, justice, and liberalism by eminent scholars. The editors are to be thanked for this exceptionally stimulating volume which explores some of the central issues in political and social philosophy.'. Life and Work Rawls was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a prominent lawyer, his mother a chapter president of the League of Women Voters. Hart, Isaiah Berlin, and Stuart Hampshire. His first professorial appointments were at Cornell and MIT. In Rawls joined the faculty at Harvard, where he taught for more than thirty years. The exceptions were two wars. As a college student Rawls wrote an intensely religious senior thesis BI and had considered studying for the priesthood. Yet Rawls lost his Christian faith as an infantryman in World War II on seeing the capriciousness of death in combat and learning of the horrors of the Holocaust. Rawls first set out justice as fairness in systematic detail in his book, A Theory of Justice. Rawls continued to rework justice as fairness throughout his life, restating the theory in Political Liberalism, The Law of Peoples, and Justice as Fairness Those interested in the evolution of justice as fairness from onwards should consult Freeman and Weithman The first role is practical: A second role of political philosophy is to help citizens to orient themselves within their own social world. Philosophy can meditate on what it is to be a member of a certain society, and how the nature and history of that society can be understood from a broader perspective. A third role is to probe the limits of practicable political possibility. Political philosophy must describe workable political arrangements that can gain support from real people. Yet within these limits, philosophy can be utopian: Given men as they are, as Rousseau said, philosophy imagines how laws might be. A fourth role of political philosophy is reconciliation: Philosophy can show that human life is not simply domination and cruelty, prejudice, folly and corruption; but that at least in some ways it is better that it has become as it is. Rawls viewed his own work as a practical contribution to resolving the long-standing tension in democratic thought between liberty and equality, and to limning the limits of civic and of international toleration. He offers the members of his own society a way of understanding themselves as free and equal citizens within a fair democratic polity, and describes a hopeful vision of a stably just constitutional democracy doing its part within a peaceful international community. To individuals who are frustrated that their fellow citizens and fellow humans do not see the whole truth as they do, Rawls offers the reconciling thought that this diversity of worldviews results from, and can support, a social order with greater freedom for all. Rawls has no universal principle: Rawls confines his theorizing to the political domain, and within this domain he holds that the correct principles for each sub-domain depend on its particular agents and constraints. Rawls covers the domain of the political by addressing its sub-domains in sequence. The first sub-domain that he addresses is a self-contained democratic society reproducing itself across generations. Once principles are in place for such a society, Rawls moves to a second sub-domain: Rawls suggests though he does not show that his sequence of theories could extend to cover further sub-domains, such as human interactions with animals. Universal coverage will have been achieved once this sequence is complete, each sub-domain having received the principles appropriate to it. Ideal theory makes two types of idealizing assumptions about its subject matter. First, ideal theory assumes that all actors citizens or societies are generally willing to comply with whatever principles are chosen. Ideal theory thus idealizes away the possibility of law-breaking, either by individuals crime or societies aggressive war. Second, ideal theory assumes reasonably favorable social conditions, wherein citizens and societies are able to abide by principles of political cooperation. Citizens are not so driven by hunger, for example, that their capacity for moral reasoning is overwhelmed; nor are nations struggling to overcome famine or the failure of their states. Completing ideal theory first, Rawls says, yields a systematic understanding of how to reform our non-ideal world, and fixes a vision mentioned above of what is the best that can be hoped for. Once ideal theory is completed for a political sub-domain, non-ideal theory can be set out by reference to the ideal. For instance, Page 1

2 once we find ideal principles for citizens who can be productive members of society over a complete life, we will be better able to frame non-ideal principles for providing health care to citizens with serious illnesses or disabilities. Similarly, once we understand the ideal principles of international relations, we will better see how the international community should act toward failed states, as well as toward aggressive states that threaten the peace. Were one to attain reflective equilibrium, the justification of each belief would follow from all beliefs relating in these networks of mutual support and explanation. Though perfect reflective equilibrium is unattainable, we can use the method of reflective equilibrium to get closer to it and so increase the justifiability of our beliefs. Doing this inevitably brings out conflicts where, for example, a specific judgment clashes with a more general conviction, or where an abstract principle cannot accommodate a particular kind of case. One proceeds by revising these beliefs as necessary, striving always to increase the coherence of the whole. Carrying through this process of mutual adjustment brings one closer to narrow reflective equilibrium: Because of its emphasis on coherence, reflective equilibrium is often contrasted with foundationalism as an account of justified belief. Within foundationalist approaches, some subset of beliefs is considered to be unrevisable, thereby serving as a foundation on which all other beliefs are to be based. Reflective equilibrium privileges no such subset of beliefs: Metaphysical beliefs about free will or personal identity might be relevant, as could epistemological beliefs about how we come to know what moral facts there are. However, while this is correct in principle, Rawls holds that in practice productive moral and political theorizing will proceed to a large extent independent of metaphysics and epistemology. Indeed, as a methodological presumption Rawls reverses the traditional order of priority. Progress in metaethics will derive from progress in substantive moral and political theorizing, instead of as often assumed vice versa CP, â Legitimacy and Stability within a Liberal Society In a free society, citizens will have disparate worldviews. They will believe in different religions or none at all; they will have differing conceptions of right and wrong; they will divide on the value of lifestyles and of forms of interpersonal relationships. Democratic citizens will have contrary commitments, yet within any country there can only be one law. The law must either establish a national church, or not; women must either have equal rights, or not; abortion and gay marriage must either be permissible under the constitution, or not; the economy must be set up in one way or another. Rawls holds that the need to impose a unified law on a diverse citizenry raises two fundamental challenges. The first is the challenge of legitimacy: How can it be legitimate to coerce all citizens to follow just one law, given that citizens will inevitably hold quite different worldviews? The second challenge is the challenge of stability, which looks at political power from the receiving end. Why would a citizen willingly obey the law if it is imposed on her by a collective body many of whose members have beliefs and values quite dissimilar to her own? Yet unless most citizens willingly obey the law, no social order can be stable for long. Rawls answers these challenges of legitimacy and stability with his theory of political liberalism. Political liberalism answers the conceptually prior questions of legitimacy and stability, so fixing the context and starting points for justice as fairness. The Liberal Principle of Legitimacy In a democracy, political power is always the power of the people as a collective body. In light of the diversity within a democracy, what would it mean for citizens legitimately to exercise coercive political power over one another? Our exercise of political power is fully proper only when it is exercised in accordance with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens as free and equal may reasonably be expected to endorse in the light of principles and ideals acceptable to their common human reason. PL, According to this principle, political power may only be used in ways that all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse. The use of political power must fulfill a criterion of reciprocity: The liberal principle of legitimacy intensifies the challenge of legitimacy: What constitution could all citizens reasonably be expected to endorse? They are willing to propose and abide by mutually acceptable rules, given the assurance that others will also do so. They will also honor these rules, even when this means sacrificing their own particular interests. Reasonable citizens want, in short, to belong to a society where political power is legitimately used. Each reasonable citizen has her own view about God and life, right and wrong, good and bad. Each has, that is, what Rawls calls her own comprehensive doctrine. Yet because Page 2

3 reasonable citizens are reasonable, they are unwilling to impose their own comprehensive doctrines on others who are also willing to search for mutually agreeable rules. Though each may believe that she knows the truth about the best way to live, none is willing to force other reasonable citizens to live according to her beliefs, even if she belongs to a majority that has the power to enforce those beliefs on everyone. One reason that reasonable citizens are so tolerant, Rawls says, is that they accept a certain explanation for the diversity of worldviews in their society. Reasonable citizens accept the burdens of judgment. The deepest questions of religion, philosophy, and morality are very difficult even for conscientious people to think through. People will answer these questions in different ways because of their own particular life experiences their upbringing, class, occupation, and so on. Reasonable citizens understand that these deep issues are ones on which people of good will can disagree, and so will be unwilling to impose their own worldviews on those who have reached conclusions different than their own. This capacity gives hope that the diversity of worldviews in a democratic society may represent not merely pluralism, but reasonable pluralism. Rawls hopes, that is, that the religious, moral, and philosophical doctrines that citizens accept will themselves endorse toleration and accept the essentials of a democratic regime. In the religious sphere for example a reasonable pluralism might contain a reasonable Catholicism, a reasonable interpretation of Islam, a reasonable atheism, and so on. Being reasonable, none of these doctrines will advocate the use of coercive political power to impose conformity on those with different beliefs. The possibility of reasonable pluralism softens but does not solve the challenge of legitimacy: For even in a society of reasonable pluralism, it would be unreasonable to expect everyone to endorse, say, a reasonable Catholicism as the basis for a constitutional settlement. Reasonable Muslims or atheists cannot be expected to endorse Catholicism as setting the basic terms for social life. Nor, of course, can Catholics be expected to accept Islam or atheism as the fundamental basis of law. No comprehensive doctrine can be accepted by all reasonable citizens, and so no comprehensive doctrine can serve as the basis for the legitimate use of coercive political power. Since justification is addressed to others, it proceeds from what is, or can be, held in common; and so we begin from shared fundamental ideas implicit in the public political culture in the hope of developing from them a political conception that can gain free and reasoned agreement in judgment. PL, â 01 There is only one source of fundamental ideas that can serve as a focal point for all reasonable citizens of a liberal society. These fundamental ideas from the public political culture can be crafted into a political conception of justice. A political conception is not derived from any particular comprehensive doctrine, nor is it a compromise among the worldviews that happen to exist in society at the moment. Rather a political conception is freestanding: Reasonable citizens, who want to cooperate with one another on mutually acceptable terms, will see that a freestanding political conception generated from ideas in the public political culture is the only basis for cooperation that all citizens can reasonably be expected to endorse. The use of coercive political power guided by the principles of a political conception of justice will therefore be legitimate. The three most fundamental ideas that Rawls finds in the public political culture of a democratic society are that citizens are free and equal, and that society should be a fair system of cooperation. Page 3

4 Chapter 2 : Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) "This is a collection of authoritative essays on utilitarianism, justice, and liberalism by eminent scholars. The editors are to be thanked for this exceptionally stimulating volume which explores some of the central issues in political and social philosophy.". He is chiefly known, however, for his book A Theory of Justice, an effort to define social justice. The work has greatly influenced modern political thought. Rawls was dissatisfied with the traditional philosophical arguments about what makes a social institution just and about what justifies political or social actions and policies. The utilitarian argument holds that societies should pursue the greatest good for the greatest number. This argument has a number of problems, including, especially, that it seems to be consistent with the idea of the tyranny of majorities over minorities. The intuitionist argument holds that humans intuit what is right or wrong by some innate moral sense. Rawls attempts to establish a reasoned account of social justice through the social contract approach. This approach holds that a society is in some sense an agreement among all those within that society. If a society were an agreement, Rawls asks, what kind of arrangement would everyone agree to? He states that the contract is a purely hypothetical one: He does not argue that people had existed outside the social state or had made agreements to establish a particular type of society. Rawls begins his work with the idea of justice as fairness. He identifies the basic structure of society as the primary subject of justice and identifies justice as the first virtue of social institutions. He considers justice a matter of the organization and internal divisions of a society. The main idea of a theory of justice asks, What kind of organization of society would rational persons choose if they were in an initial position of independence and equality and were setting up a system of cooperation? This is what Rawls sees as a hypothetical original position: After considering the main characteristics of justice as fairness and the theoretical superiority of this approach to utilitarianism, intuitionism, or other perspectives, Rawls looks at the principles of justice. He identifies two principles: From these two principles Rawls derives an egalitarian conception of justice that would allow the inequality of conditions implied by equality of opportunity but would also give more attention to those born with fewer assets and into less favorable social positions. Rawls concludes the first part of his book by looking at the idea of the original position outside society. This hypothetical original position can be approximated by using the thought experiment of the veil of ignorance. If no one could know what place he or she would occupy in the society being formed, what arrangement of the society would a rational person choose? Rawls maintains that the choice would be for a social structure that would best benefit the unknowing chooser if she or he happened to end up in the least desirable position. In the second part of the work, Rawls considers the implications of his view of justice for social institutions. He discusses in detail equal liberty, economic distribution, and duties and obligations as well as the main characteristics of each that would make up a just society. He does not, however, identify any particular type of social or political system that would be consistent with his theory. He deals only with the demands that his version of justice places on institutions. In the third and final section, Rawls deals with ends or ultimate goals of thinking about social justice. He argues for the need to have a theory of goodness, and he makes a case for seeing goodness as rationality. Then, he turns to moral psychology and considers how people acquire a sentiment of justice. Finally, he examines the good of justice, or how justice is connected to goodness. Rawls argues that in a well-ordered society, ideas of goodness and justice must be consistent with each other. A Theory of Justice is widely recognized as an essential contribution to thought about the nature of justice. However, even supporters of Rawls acknowledge that his work raises many questions. One of the earliest major responses to the book came from his Harvard colleague, philosopher Robert Nozick. The assumptions behind A Theory of Justice are essentially redistributive: That is, Rawls posits equal distribution of resources as the desirable state and then argues that inequality can be justified only by benefits for the least advantaged. Nozick points out that resources are produced by people and that people have rights to the things they produce. Thus, attempts to improve the Page 4

5 condition of the least advantaged through redistribution are unjust because they make some people work involuntarily for others and deprive people of the goods and opportunities they have created through time and effort. Other critics have focused on the idea of the original state and the veil of ignorance used as a thought experiment to approximate the original state. The claim that rational individuals behind a veil of ignorance would choose the greatest possible equality has been challenged as arbitrary and unverifiable. Rational individuals might well choose a social structure with large rewards for the majority of people and small rewards for the minority on the grounds that one is more likely to end up as part of a majority than a minority. Moreover, the veil of ignorance of where one will be in a society also takes away all knowledge of what one will do. Legal justice is generally considered a matter of appropriate responses to actions: In the version offered by Rawls, justice is detached from anything that anyone has done and thus may have nothing to do with any idea of what people deserve. The reluctance of Rawls to identify any particular type of society as just, especially in the second part of the book dealing with institutions, may leave Rawls open to the charge that he offers no guidance for the actual content of justice. For example, proponents of a highly unequal and competitive market economy may argue that the abundance of wealth produced by their preferred system contributes to the absolute standard of living of the poorest people in society. On the other hand, advocates of a highly redistributionist economy can maintain that radical redistribution of wealth will provide the greatest support for the poorest. Because no one can knowâ behind a veil of ignoranceâ which system would lead to the best possible lives for the poor, there can be no way of deciding what kind of society should be preferred. The fundamental idea that justice is a matter of the basic structure of society is also open to question. To say that the basic structure of society can be made just or fair is to say that it can be designed both hypothetically and actually. Some social thinkers argue that societies are not designed per se; they are produced through history and by complex webs of interaction among individuals and institutions. From this perspective, justice is a characteristic of specific acts or processes within social systems, such as legal actions or political mechanisms, and it is misleading to extend the concept of justice to a society as a whole. Supporters of Rawls often look to revise parts of his argument, while opponents suggest alternatives. Still, most political thinkers acknowledge that A Theory of Justice introduced a new conceptual basis for debates about the core principles of social policy and action. Page 5

6 Chapter 3 : Justice - Wikipedia Review of the hardback: 'This is a collection of authoritative essays on utilitarianism, justice, and liberalism by eminent scholars. The editors are to be thanked for this exceptionally stimulating volume which explores some of the central issues in political and social philosophy.'. Two of his brothers died in childhood because they had contracted fatal illnesses from him In, the seven-year-old Rawls contracted diphtheria. His brother Bobby, younger by 20 months, visited him in his room and was fatally infected. The next winter, Rawls contracted pneumonia. Another younger brother, Tommy, caught the illness from him and died. He instead remained committed mainly to his academic and family life. He was nevertheless able to complete a book titled The Law of Peoples, the most complete statement of his views on international justice, and shortly before his death in November published Justice As Fairness: A Restatement, a response to criticisms of A Theory of Justice. He was survived by his wife, their four children, and four grandchildren. The first, A Theory of Justice, focused on distributive justice and attempted to reconcile the competing claims of the values of freedom and equality. The second, Political Liberalism, addressed the question of how citizens divided by intractable religious and philosophical disagreements could come to endorse a constitutional democratic regime. The third, The Law of Peoples, focused on the issue of global justice. Rather, his intent was to show that notions of freedom and equality could be integrated into a seamless unity he called justice as fairness. By attempting to enhance the perspective which his readers should take when thinking about justice, Rawls hoped to show the supposed conflict between freedom and equality to be illusory. The intuition motivating its employment is this: When we think about what it would mean for a just state of affairs to obtain between persons, we eliminate certain features such as hair or eye color, height, race, etc. Each individual, however, deliberates behind a " veil of ignorance ": The only thing that a given member knows about themselves is that they are in possession of the basic capacities necessary to fully and willfully participate in an enduring system of mutual cooperation; each knows they can be a member of the society. Rawls posits two basic capacities that the individuals would know themselves to possess. First, individuals know that they have the capacity to form, pursue, and revise a conception of the good, or life plan. Exactly what sort of conception of the good this is, however, the individual does not yet know. It may be, for example, religious or secular, but at the start, the individual in the original position does not know which. Second, each individual understands him or herself to have the capacity to develop a sense of justice and a generally effective desire to abide by it. Knowing only these two features of themselves, the group will deliberate in order to design a social structure, during which each person will seek his or her maximal advantage. The reason is simple: Rawls develops his original position by modeling it, in certain respects at least, after the "initial situations" of various social contract thinkers who came before him, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. If he has succeeded, then the original position thought experiment may function as a full specification of the moral standpoint we should attempt to achieve when deliberating about social justice. In setting out his theory, Rawls described his method as one of " reflective equilibrium ", a concept which has since been used in other areas of philosophy. Principles of justice[ edit ] Rawls derives two principles of justice from the original position. The first of these is the Liberty Principle, which establishes equal basic liberties for all citizens. Rawls argues that a second principle of equality would be agreed upon to guarantee liberties that represent meaningful options for all in society and ensure distributive justice. For example, formal guarantees of political voice and freedom of assembly are of little real worth to the desperately poor and marginalized in society. Demanding that everyone have exactly the same effective opportunities in life would almost certainly offend the very liberties that are supposedly being equalized. Nonetheless, we would want to ensure at least the "fair worth" of our liberties: Thus participants would be moved to affirm a two-part second principle comprising Fair Equality of Opportunity and the famous and controversial [30] difference principle. This second principle ensures that Page 6

7 those with comparable talents and motivation face roughly similar life chances and that inequalities in society work to the benefit of the least advantaged. Rawls held that these principles of justice apply to the "basic structure" of fundamental social institutions such as the judiciary, the economic structure and the political constitution, a qualification that has been the source of some controversy and constructive debate see the work of Gerald Cohen. This has also been a topic of much debate among moral and political philosophers. Finally, Rawls took his approach as applying in the first instance to what he called a "well-ordered society Such disagreement, he insisted, was reasonable â the result of the free exercise of human rationality under the conditions of open enquiry and free conscience that the liberal state is designed to safeguard. The question of legitimacy in the face of reasonable disagreement was urgent for Rawls because his own justification of Justice as Fairness relied upon a Kantian conception of the human good that can be reasonably rejected. If the political conception offered in A Theory of Justice can only be shown to be good by invoking a controversial conception of human flourishing, it is unclear how a liberal state ordered according to it could possibly be legitimate. The intuition animating this seemingly new concern is actually no different from the guiding idea of A Theory of Justice, namely that the fundamental charter of a society must rely only on principles, arguments and reasons that cannot be reasonably rejected by the citizens whose lives will be limited by its social, legal, and political circumscriptions. In other words, the legitimacy of a law is contingent upon its justification being impossible to reasonably reject. This old insight took on a new shape, however, when Rawls realized that its application must extend to the deep justification of Justice as Fairness itself, which he had presented in terms of a reasonably rejectable Kantian conception of human flourishing as the free development of autonomous moral agency. The core of Political Liberalism, accordingly, is its insistence that, in order to retain its legitimacy, the liberal state must commit itself to the "ideal of public reason ". This roughly means that citizens in their public capacity must engage one another only in terms of reasons whose status as reasons is shared between them. Political reasoning, then, is to proceed purely in terms of "public reasons". This is because reasons based upon the interpretation of sacred text are non-public their force as reasons relies upon faith commitments that can be reasonably rejected, whereas reasons that rely upon the value of providing children with environments in which they may develop optimally are public reasons â their status as reasons draws upon no deep, controversial conception of human flourishing. Rawls held that the duty of civility â the duty of citizens to offer one another reasons that are mutually understood as reasons â applies within what he called the "public political forum". This forum extends from the upper reaches of government â for example the supreme legislative and judicial bodies of the society â all the way down to the deliberations of a citizen deciding for whom to vote in state legislatures or how to vote in public referenda. Campaigning politicians should also, he believed, refrain from pandering to the non-public religious or moral convictions of their constituencies. The ideal of public reason secures the dominance of the public political values â freedom, equality, and fairness â that serve as the foundation of the liberal state. But what about the justification of these values? Since any such justification would necessarily draw upon deep religious or moral metaphysical commitments which would be reasonably rejectable, Rawls held that the public political values may only be justified privately by individual citizens. The public liberal political conception and its attendant values may and will be affirmed publicly in judicial opinions and presidential addresses, for example but its deep justifications will not. The task of justification falls to what Rawls called the "reasonable comprehensive doctrines" and the citizens who subscribe to them. A reasonable Catholic will justify the liberal values one way, a reasonable Muslim another, and a reasonable secular citizen yet another way. His hope is that similar accounts may be presented for many other comprehensive doctrines. Such a consensus would necessarily exclude some doctrines, namely, those that are "unreasonable", and so one may wonder what Rawls has to say about such doctrines. An unreasonable comprehensive doctrine is unreasonable in the sense that it is incompatible with the duty of civility. This is simply another way of saying that an unreasonable doctrine is incompatible with the fundamental political values a liberal theory of justice is designed to safeguard â freedom, equality and fairness. So one answer to the question of what Rawls has to say about Page 7

8 such doctrines is â nothing. For one thing, the liberal state cannot justify itself to individuals such as religious fundamentalists who hold to such doctrines, because any such justification would â as has been noted â proceed in terms of controversial moral or religious commitments that are excluded from the public political forum. But, more importantly, the goal of the Rawlsian project is primarily to determine whether or not the liberal conception of political legitimacy is internally coherent, and this project is carried out by the specification of what sorts of reasons persons committed to liberal values are permitted to use in their dialogue, deliberations and arguments with one another about political matters. The Rawlsian project has this goal to the exclusion of concern with justifying liberal values to those not already committed â or at least open â to them. Rawls also modified the principles of justice as follows with the first principle having priority over the second, and the first half of the second having priority over the latter half: Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: These principles are subtly modified from the principles in Theory. The first principle now reads "equal claim" instead of "equal right", and he also replaces the phrase "system of basic liberties" with "a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties". The two parts of the second principle are also switched, so that the difference principle becomes the latter of the three. The Law of Peoples[ edit ] Main article: He claimed there that "well-ordered" peoples could be either "liberal" or "decent". Rawls argued that the legitimacy of a liberal international order is contingent on tolerating decent peoples, which differ from liberal peoples, among other ways, in that they might have state religions and deny adherents of minority faiths the right to hold positions of power within the state, and might organize political participation via consultation hierarchies rather than elections. However, no well-ordered peoples may violate human rights or behave in an externally aggressive manner. Peoples that fail to meet the criteria of "liberal" or "decent" peoples are referred to as "outlaw states", "societies burdened by unfavourable conditions" or "benevolent absolutisms" depending on their particular failings. Such peoples do not have the right to mutual respect and toleration possessed by liberal and decent peoples. Rawls denied that his principles should be so applied, partly on the grounds that states, unlike citizens, were self-sufficient in the cooperative enterprises that constitute domestic societies. Although Rawls recognized that aid should be given to governments which are unable to protect human rights for economic reasons, he claimed that the purpose for this aid is not to achieve an eventual state of global equality, but rather only to ensure that these societies could maintain liberal or decent political institutions. He argued, among other things, that continuing to give aid indefinitely would see nations with industrious populations subsidize those with idle populations and would create a moral hazard problem where governments could spend irresponsibly in the knowledge that they will be bailed out by those nations who had spent responsibly. He also detailed here the ideal of the statesman, a political leader who looks to the next generation and promotes international harmony, even in the face of significant domestic pressure to act otherwise. Rawls also controversially claimed that violations of human rights can legitimize military intervention in the violating states, though he also expressed the hope that such societies could be induced to reform peacefully by the good example of liberal and decent peoples. The musical premiered at Oxford in and was revived for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Bibliography[ edit ] A Theory of Justice. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, The revised edition of incorporates changes that Rawls made for translated editions of A Theory of Justice. Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation TJ to refer to this work. The John Dewey Essays in Philosophy, 4. Columbia University Press, The hardback edition published in is not identical. The paperback adds a valuable new introduction and an essay titled "Reply to Habermas". Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation PL to refer to this work. The Law of Peoples: Harvard University Press, This slim book includes two works; a further development of his essay entitled "The Law of Peoples" and another entitled "Public Reason Revisited", both published earlier in his career. This collection of shorter papers was edited by Samuel Freeman. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, Page 8

9 Chapter 4 : Political Liberalism Summary - theinnatdunvilla.com John Rawls is the subject of A Theory of Justice: The Musical!, an award-nominated musical billed as an "all-singing, all-dancing romp through 2, years of political philosophy". The musical premiered at Oxford in and was revived for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Of the Connection between Justice and Utility Part 1 Summary Mill says that throughout history, one of the biggest barriers to the acceptance of utility has been that it does not allow for a theory of justice. In this chapter, then, Mill will determine whether the justice or injustice of an action is something intrinsic and distinct from questions of utility. In examining this it is necessary to determine whether a sense of justice exists in itself, or is derivative and formed by a combination of other feelings; is this sense explicable by our emotional make-up, or is it a "special provision of nature"? To answer this, we must ascertain what the distinguishing quality of justice is, if there is such a quality. Mill begins by trying to pin down the meaning of justice, by coming up with a list of those things that are commonly classified as just or unjust. First, it is considered unjust to deprive someone of his legal rights. However, this concept has exceptions. For example, a person may have legal rights he should not have--his rights may be the provision of a bad law. While people vary on whether bad laws can be justly disobeyed, all people agree that laws can be unjust. Therefore, law cannot be the ultimate standard of justice. A second form of injustice comes from depriving someone of something he has a moral right to possess. A fourth form of injustice is to violate an agreement with someone or disappoint expectations that one knowingly nurtured. Fifth, it is considered unjust to show favoritism and preference in inappropriate circumstances. The claim is rather that a person should only be influenced by those considerations that should apply in a given circumstance. Finally, the idea of equality is seen by many to be a component of justice; some people may make an exception for the sake of expediency, however. Given so many different applications of the concept of justice, it is hard to find what links them all together, and on what concept the sentiment of justice is based. Nevertheless, people do see justice as a unified concept, and do feel a sentiment of justice regardless of whether they understand its foundation. Mill says that some help may come from looking at the history of the word. Thus, the most primitive element of justice is the idea of conformity to law. The Greeks and Romans realized that there could be bad laws, and thus justice came to be associated only to those laws that ought to exist, including those that should exist but do not. Mill also recognizes, however, that the idea of justice is often applied to areas about which we would not want legislation: At this point, Mill observes that while this discussion has given a true account of the origin and development of justice, it does not show a distinction from other forms of morality. Thus, moral obligation in general comes from the idea of duty, the idea that a person may rightly be compelled to do something. He argues that this concept of deserving or not deserving punishment is the essence of moral thinking in general. Mill argues that justice can be distinguished from other forms of morality by looking at the difference between perfect and imperfect obligations. Imperfect obligations are those that no one person has the right to require of another. Perfect obligations are those that a person may demand of another. Justice corresponds with the idea of perfect obligation: In cases of justice, the person who has been wronged has had his or her moral right impinged upon; it is thus his or her moral right to seek restitution. Commentary Here Mill responds to the claim that utilitarianism is opposed to justice. This section is mostly descriptive, as Mill writes about the definition of justice and its historical origins. It is significant that Mill does not present his own theory about what justice requires. Thus, in defining justice Mill looks to what other people mean by the term. It exists because people believe it exists, and it means what they believe it to mean. Starting from the popular conception of justice, Mill theorizes about what links a diverse set of ideas about justice. Ultimately, he argues that they are united by the concept of rights, a notion he introduces in his claims about perfect and imperfect obligations. This section is the first time that Mill spends any time writing about rights. In the next section, he will go into the idea in greater detail. For Mill, a right means that a person has a valid claim that society to Page 9

10 protect him against any violation. Many utilitarians dismiss the idea of rights as nonsense, and many debates about utilitarianism center around whether rights exist. Mill has a different perspective on this issue, however. In the next section Mill will defend rights, and do so under a utilitarian framework. Page 10

11 Chapter 5 : Justice, Political Liberalism, and Utilitarianism - Marc Fleurbaey - Bok () Bokus John Stuart Mill () was the most famous and influential British philosopher of the nineteenth century. He was one of the last systematic philosophers, making significant contributions in logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, and social theory. Mill was raised in the tradition of Philosophical Radicalism, made famous by Jeremy Bentham â, John Austin â, and his father James Mill â, which applied utilitarian principles in a self-conscious and systematic way to issues of institutional design and social reform. Utilitarianism assesses actions and institutions in terms of their effects on human happiness and enjoins us to perform actions and design institutions so that they promoteâ in one formulation, maximizeâ human happiness. As documented in his Autobiography, Mill was groomed from birth by his father to become the ultimate Victorian intellectual and utilitarian reformer. As part of this apprenticeship, Mill was exposed to an extremely demanding education, shaped by utilitarian principles. While Mill followed the strict intellectual regimen laid down by his father for many years, he suffered a profound intellectual and emotional crisis in the period â As Mill emerged from his depression, he became more concerned with the development of well-rounded individuals and with the role of feeling, culture, and creativity in the happiness of individuals see Capaldi Though Mill never renounced the liberal and utilitarian tradition and mission that he inherited from his father, his mental crisis and recovery greatly influenced his interpretation of this tradition. He became critical of the moral psychology of Bentham and his father and of some of the social theory underlying their plans for reform. It is arguable that Mill tends to downplay the significance of his innovations and to underestimate the intellectual discontinuities between himself and his father. We need to try to understand the extent of the transformation Mill brings to the utilitarian and liberal principles of the Radicals. Bentham begins his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation with this hedonistic assumption about human motivation. Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure Principles I 1. Bentham allows that we may be moved by the pleasures and pains of others. But he appears to think that these other-regarding pleasures can move us only insofar as we take pleasure in the pleasure of others V In his unfinished Constitutional Code, Bentham makes this commitment to psychological egoism clear. On the occasion of every act he exercises, every human being is led to pursue that line of conduct which, according to his view of the case, taken by him at the moment, will be in the highest degree contributory to his own greatest happiness. So the version of psychological egoism to which he is attracted is psychological hedonism. He may see it as a generalization from his observations about the motives underlying human behavior. James Mill also treats psychological hedonism as axiomatic in his Essay on Government The desire, therefore, of that power which is necessary to render the persons and properties of human beings subservient to our pleasures, is the grand governing law of human nature. But these concessions to psychological pluralism are exceptional. Even in contexts where Bentham recognizes motivation that is not ultimately self-interested, he appears to treat it as weaker and less dependable than self-interested motivation Book of Fallacies â Bentham claims that utility not only describes human motivation but also sets the standard of right and wrong Principles I 1. By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question â. Principles I 2 It remains to be determined whose happiness matters. One might imagine that it is the utility of the agent. This would be the ethical counterpart to psychological egoism. Bentham says that our account of right action, obligation, and duty ought to be governed by the principle of utility I 9â This seems to imply that an action is right or obligatory just insofar as it promotes utility. But then the right or obligatory act would seem to be the one that promotes utility the most or maximizes utility. For these reasons, it is common to understand Bentham as combining psychological hedonism and hedonistic utilitarianism. Bentham is not unaware of this tension. He addresses part of the problem in the political context in other writings, Page 11

12 notably his Plan for Parliamentary Reform In the political context, the problem is how we can get self-interested rulers to rule in the interest of the governed, as utilitarianism implies that they should. We can reconcile self-interested motivation and promotion of the common good if we make rulers democratically accountable to all those whom they govern, for this tends to make the interest of the governed and the interest of the governors coincide. Each person acts only or predominantly to promote his own interests. The proper object of government is the interest of the governed. Hence, rulers will pursue the proper object of government if and only if their interests coincide with those of the governed. Hence, rulers must be democratically accountable. It was this reasoning that led Bentham and James Mill to advocate democratic reforms that included extending the franchise to workers and peasant farmers. In Principles Chapter IV Bentham sets out his conception of pleasure and utility in more detail, distinguishing between intrinsic and relational dimensions of pleasures. For our purposes, some dimensions matter more than others. Hedonism says that pleasure is the one and only intrinsic good and that pain is the one and only intrinsic evil. All other things have only extrinsic or instrumental value depending on whether and, if so, how much pleasure or pain they produce. Because the utilitarian asks us to maximize value, he has to be able to make sense of quantities or magnitudes of value associated with different options, where he assigns value to pleasure and disvalue to pain. Intensity, duration, and extent would appear to be the most relevant variables here. Each option is associated with various pleasures and pains both within a single life and across lives. For any given option we must find out how many pleasures and pains it produces, whether those occur in a single life or in different lives. For every distinct pleasure and pain, we must calculate its intensity and its duration. That would give us the total amount of net pleasure or pain associated with each option. Then we must do that option with greatest total. If there are two or more options with the greatest total, we are free to select any of these. Bentham does not assume that our estimates of what will maximize utility will always be reliable. Nor does he assume that we should always try to maximize utility Principles I 13, IV 6. Doing so is costly, and we may sometimes promote utility best by not trying to promote it directly. Nonetheless, utility, he thinks, is the standard of right conduct. This is not just guilt by association. There, Mill aims to show that happiness is the one and only thing desirable in itself U IV 2. To do this, he argues that happiness is desirable in itself IV 3, and a central premise in this argument is that everyone desires his own happiness IV 3. Mill later argues that only happiness is desirable IV 4. But the proof does not reveal Mill to be a psychological egoist. Indeed, in the second half of the proof he allows that some agents have a disinterested concern for virtue and that they care about virtue for its own sake IV 4â 5. And what is true of virtue is no less true of less grand objects of desire, such as money or power IV 6. These too it is possible to desire for their own sakes. That the pleasures or pains of another person can only be pleasurable or painful to us through the association of our own pleasures and pains with them, is true in one sense, which is probably that intended by the author, but not true in another, against which he has not sufficiently guarded his mode of expression. It is evident, that the only pleasures or pains of which we have direct experience â [are] those felt by ourselves â [and] that the pleasure or pain with which we contemplate the pleasure or pain felt by someone else, is itself a pleasure or pain of our own. But if it be meant that in such cases the pleasure or pain is consciously referred to self, I take this to be a mistake. Bentham did no more than dress up the very trivial proposition that all people do what they feel themselves most disposed to do â. He by no means intended by this assertion to impute universal selfishness to mankind, for he reckoned the motive of sympathy as an interest. If so, there is no thesis that is both substantive and plausible. The substantive thesis may seem speciously attractive if we tacitly confuse it with the trivially true thesis. But if they do so because they conflate it with the trivial but true thesis, then they commit the fallacy of equivocation. So Mill rejects the substantive doctrines of psychological egoism and hedonism that Bentham and his father sometimes defended or suggested. This is really part of a larger criticism of the conception of psychology and human nature underlying Benthamite utilitarianism, which Mill elaborates in his essays on Bentham. Though he never abandons the utilitarian tradition of the Radicals, Mill modifies their assumptions about happiness. He explains his commitment to utilitarianism early in Chapter II of Utilitarianism. By Page 12