Justice is Entitlement. Discuss.

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Justice is Entitlement. Discuss.

‘Social Justice’ has only relatively recently become of significant interest to political philosophers. It is a very modern concept to suggest all human beings are of equal moral worth and until the publication of John Rawls’ ‘A Theory of Justice’ most governments followed Utilitarian principles. Utilitarianism emphasises the wellbeing of society over the individual, a fact both Rawls and Robert Nozick, his main competitor, both find serious fault in as this does not recognise the separateness of individuals. Simply because a society is efficient does not mean that it will be just, the example of Nazi Germany best demonstrates this.  The natural differences between humankind should be reflected in how society treats them and a state has responsibility to ensure the welfare of its citizens. We can contrast the approaches of both Rawls and Nozick in relation to their concepts of social justice, how benefits and resources should be distributed in order to achieve the most morally right and just distribution. Nozick’s work was developed in main as a response to or critique of Rawls and so this essay shall address the Rawlsian concept of justice first, Justice is Needs.

Rawls’ work is most heavily associated with his version of social justice, the belief individuals should not suffer from circumstance beyond their control i.e. those born least socially or genetically advantaged. Equally he strongly argues we should also not benefit from talents and assets which we do not deserve. Such advantages are ‘arbitrary from a moral point of view’ and are simply based on luck. ‘The greater advantages he could achieve with his national endowments’ are unjust in his view (Rawls 1972:104). The basic social structure must therefore be altered to compensate for the ‘natural and social lottery’, in favour of the handicapped and the poorer social groups. He allows the existence of inequalities as long as they benefit the least advantaged - ‘Just and only just if they work as part of a scheme to improve the expectations of the least advantaged members of society’ (Rawls 1972:75). His is a non-welfarist distribution of primary social groups as it is to objective standards, Justice according to ‘needs’ (Roemer 1998:164). To prove his theory he uses a hypothetical situation, placing oneself in the original position – a position of complete ignorance, in which he believes all rational human beings would act in their own interest and choose the distribution which maximises the position of the least advantaged, i.e. the minimum position in society. Humans are rationally self interested so a broadly egalitarian distribution of wealth is what most people would regard as ‘fair’ (Heywood 1994: 230). Hence Rawlsian justice is also called ‘Justice as Fairness’.

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There are however, several glaring flaws in Rawls’ theory, many of which Nozick leaps on. As his is an end-state theory, where a positive outcome i.e. an improvement to the distribution is all that matters, Nozick criticises this for failing to take into account how this came about. Rawls arguably places too much emphasis on outcomes, for example robbery at gunpoint versus gift giving, for him there is no distinction as long as the outcome is positive (Roemer 1998:205). Nozick also takes great issue with the patterned nature of Rawls’ distribution - whereby the justice of a distribution is determined ...

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