Does Rawls succeed in deriving his principles of justice from the conditions of the original position?

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William Foulsham

Does Rawls succeed in deriving his principles of justice from the conditions of the original position?

In ‘A Theory of Justice’, John Rawls’s aim was to propose “a conception of justice that provides a reasonably systematic alternative to utilitarianism”.  In order to critically assess utilitarianism in comparison to other conceptions of justice, Rawls devised a device known as the ‘original position’.  By means of this device, Rawls derives and determines a preference for his own candidate conception of justice; the ‘two principles of justice’.  In the following paper I shall argue that Rawls is successful in the derivation of his conception of justice.

I shall begin by introducing Rawls’s formulation of the original position and the veil of ignorance, making reference to the ‘two moral powers’ that form the basis for the evaluation of different potential social contracts behind the veil.   Following this I shall explicate the manner in which Rawls derives his ‘two principles of justice’, describing the role of primary goods in his reasoning.  I shall examine the role of the original position as a screening device.  Finally I shall address criticisms of the two principles of justice advanced by John Harsanyi, explaining for what reasons they fail to undermine Rawls’s position.

‘A Theory of Justice’ revitalizes the social contract tradition of theorists such as Locke, Rousseau and Kant.  Yet Rawls’s project operates on a higher level of abstraction than the contractarian theorists that preceded him; his aim to establish certain principles of justice “that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association”.  Rawls’s intention is to develop a contractarian method of justification for these principles of justice.  In order to ensure that all parties agree that the principles of justice have been fairly decided upon (hence “justice as fairness”), Rawls develops the original position as a device for enforcing impartiality.  

        

The original position enforces impartiality by restricting parties from knowing facts that would be morally irrelevant (as Rawls contends) to their choice of principles of justice.  This restriction is embodied in the ‘veil of ignorance’; behind the veil agents are unaware of their own particular traits and their status in society.  Furthermore, agents are unaware of their ‘conception of the good’ - their specific values and aims in life.  Rawls does, however, grant that agents have ‘two moral powers’ which correspond to two ‘higher-order interests’.  The first of the ‘two moral powers’ is the capacity to formulate and live according to some particular conception of the good.  The second is the capacity for a ‘sense of justice’.  It is upon these grounds that agents evaluate potential social contracts in the original position.  It is important to note that behind the veil of ignorance the plurality of interested agents disappears; by imposing the constraints on information that Rawls does, the original position becomes a state of choice as supposed to negotiation.  The discussion of the ‘two moral powers’ leads Rawls to formulate his lexically ordered two principles of justice.  

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Rawls argues that parties in the original position would draw upon a “thin liberal theory of the good”, whereby the parties’ most compelling concern would be to secure the material and social conditions that enabled them to exercise their ‘two moral powers’.  That is, parties behind the veil would seek to ensure their capacity to form and pursue a conception of the good, and their capacity for a sense of justice.  Rawls argues that as a result, parties will evaluate potential conceptions of justice in terms of “basic” liberties – liberties that are essential to the development and the ...

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