John Rawls – Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
More Than Just Bread - Justice
What Would Be Fair If We Did Not Know Our Place in Society?
John Rawls asks one of the most important questions in political philosophy:
What makes a society fair?
His answer begins with a simple idea. A society should be understood as a system of cooperation between people who are free and equal.
But this immediately creates another question.
Who should decide the rules of that cooperation?
In modern societies, people have different religions, beliefs, values and ideas about a good life. Rawls therefore does not try to base justice on one religion or one complete moral philosophy.
Instead, he asks whether free and equal citizens could agree on fair principles for living together.
The difficulty is obvious.
People do not normally make decisions from equal positions.
Some are rich and some poor. Some are born into powerful families. Others begin life with very few opportunities. People differ in health, education, social position, sex, ethnicity, talents and many other circumstances.
If we already know where we stand in society, we may naturally prefer rules that protect our own position.
Rawls therefore asks us to imagine something very unusual.
He calls it the original position.
Imagine that we have to choose the basic rules of society, but we do not know what position we ourselves will occupy in that society.
We do not know whether we will be rich or poor.
We do not know our social class, sex or ethnic group.
We do not know our particular talents or abilities.
We do not even know the particular beliefs or view of life that we will hold.
Rawls calls this the veil of ignorance.
The purpose is not to pretend that these differences do not exist.
It is to prevent them from giving anyone an unfair advantage while the rules are being chosen.
If I do not know whether I will be rich or poor, powerful or vulnerable, what kind of society would I choose?
Would I accept rules that leave some people without basic rights if I might turn out to be one of them?
Would I accept a society with enormous inequalities if I did not know whether I would be at the top or at the bottom?
This thought experiment leads Rawls towards two principles of justice.
The first concerns basic liberties.
Every person should have the same adequate system of fundamental freedoms. These include freedom of thought and conscience, political participation, freedom of association, personal integrity and the protections provided by the rule of law.
These liberties are not rewards for wealth, talent or social position.
They belong equally to citizens.
The second principle concerns social and economic inequalities.
Rawls does not argue that everyone must have exactly the same income or wealth.
Inequality can exist.
But it must satisfy important conditions.
First, positions and opportunities must be genuinely open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
This means more than simply saying that everyone is legally allowed to compete.
People with similar ability and motivation should have broadly similar chances of success regardless of the social class into which they were born. Rawls therefore connects fair opportunity with matters such as access to education and with preventing extreme concentrations of wealth from becoming political domination.
Second, inequalities should work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.
This is Rawls’s famous difference principle.
This is a demanding idea.
It does not simply ask:
How wealthy is our society?
It also asks:
What does its system mean for those who have the least?
A society might become richer overall while some people remain excluded from its opportunities and benefits.
For Rawls, greater total wealth alone does not settle the question of justice.
The way institutions distribute rights, opportunities and advantages matters.
There is another important element in Rawls’s argument.
The principles of justice should not depend on the bargaining power people happen to possess.
Wealth, political influence, natural abilities and advantages inherited from history should not determine the fundamental rules under which everyone must live. The veil of ignorance is designed precisely to remove these advantages from the process of choosing principles of justice.
This leaves us with questions that remain very much alive.
Is equality before the law enough if people begin life with radically different opportunities?
How unequal can a society become and still be fair?
Should people benefit without limit from advantages they did nothing to earn?
What responsibilities do institutions have towards those who begin with less?
Can economic inequality eventually become political inequality?
And how would our own ideas about justice change if we did not know where we ourselves would stand?
Perhaps this is the enduring power of Rawls’s thought experiment.
He asks us, for a moment, to forget our own position.
Not because our identity and circumstances do not matter, but because fair rules should not be designed to favour us simply because we happen to be who we are.
The question then becomes remarkably simple:
Would we still call the rules fair if we did not know whether we would benefit from them?
- Artemis Hadjivarnava is a Board Director and Alumnus of Agora Dialogue, contributing to its work in dialogue, reflection and engaged citizenship.
- Dinos Toumazos is Chief Executive Officer of Agora Dialogue, an initiative dedicated to sharing knowledge and ideas, engaged citizenship and responsible leadership.