John Rawls

In 1971 American political theorist John Rawls asked the world a question; how would you design society if you had no idea what your position within that society would be? This question, along with the plethora of ideas and arguments that flowed from his book A Theory of Justice would go on to place John Rawls in the political theory hall of fame as one of, if not the most important political theorist of the second half of the 20th century.

Rawls's ideas drastically shook up political theory and breathed a breath of fresh air into a field that was struggling to find itself after World War ll. His emphasis on justice and the use of the state as a force for good caused a massive shift in the types of questions political theorists were asking and opened the door to thinking about the future again instead of focusing only on preventing past mistakes.

John Rawls biography

John Bordley Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on February 21st, 1921, to William Lee Rawls and Anna Abell Stump Rawls. Rawls's early life was one defined by tragedy. As one of five brothers, when Rawls was seven years old, he became sick with diphtheria and passed it on to his brother, who would die from the illness. The following year, John Rawls came down with a severe case of pneumonia and, as the year before, passed the illness onto another of his younger brothers, who also died as a result.

Despite the difficulties of hisJohn Rawls, Wikimedia Commons In early life, Rawls found himself studying philosophy at Princeton University. Following completing his degree, Rawls contemplated attending seminary and becoming a priest but instead chose to enlist in the US Army in 1943, where he was sent to fight in the Pacific Theatre.

Rawls enlisted into the US Army as an infantryman and saw direct combat in both New Guinea and the Philippines. Following his tours in both countries, he was sent to Japan to assist in the occupation of the country after its surrender in 1945. Upon being stationed in Japan, Rawls saw first-hand the destruction the nuclear bomb was capable of when he drove through Hiroshima and became disenchanted with the military and, amongst other reasons, decided to leave the Army at the end of his enlistment.

Following his service in the military, Rawls returned to academia, where he received his PhD from Princeton University and went on to become a professor at both MIT and then Harvard, where he retired in 1991. Beginning in 1995, Rawls began experiencing strokes and saw a gradual decline in his health until his death on November 24, 2002.

John Rawls' Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice book cover, Wikimedia CommonsA Theory of Justice is, without doubt, John Rawls's greatest work, and the primary theme running through it is one that describes justice as fairness. For Rawls, justice, in a societal sense (as opposed to a criminal justice sense), is achieved through distributing resources amongst society in a manner that benefits the least well off. Rawls was not under the impression that society could be made perfectly equal. but instead argues for a society in which the least well-off are still in a good position and not subjected to poverty or low standards of living.

He further argues that it is equality of opportunity that should be maximised in a society as opposed to an equality of outcome. It is important to note that for Rawls, his theory only works within a liberal society, that is, a society following the core tenants of liberalism.

A Theory of Justice lays out two "principles of justice" which act as the foundation for most of Rawls's thought; they are as follows:

The first principle is the most important principle for Rawls as it is the precondition for properly implementing the second principle. While the wording of the first principle may come off as a bit tricky, what Rawls is saying is that the basic liberties of a liberal society, such as free speech or the right to vote, must be guaranteed to every individual within society regardless of any other factors such as race, religion, or economic status.

The second principle is broken into two parts, and both A and B discuss how to handle the inevitable inequality that arises in a society. The first part of the principle, "social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions", is Rawls saying upfront that inequality will be present in a society and that trying to remove the inequality is pointless. Instead, he argues that these natural inequalities are to be used to satisfy two conditions: A and B.

Condition A says that social and economic inequalities are to be attached to "offices and positions" in which every individual in society, regardless of all factors (remember the first principle), will have equal access. For Rawls, this means that regardless of economic status, if an individual has the capability and desire to pursue a particular position or office, then their ability to do so should be equivalent to somebody born into a more fortunate position who might otherwise have easier access.

Condition B is known more commonly as the "difference principle".

John Rawls's veil of ignorance

A Theory of Justice offers one of the most powerful thought experiments to come out of 20th-century political philosophy, and Rawls uses it to encourage the reader to think about what a just society should look like. The experiment is known as the "original position" and goes something like this:

Statue of Blind Justice, Chris Light, CC-BY-SA-4.0, Wikimedia Commons

Because anyone could end up in the position of a cashier or CEO, poor or rich, one race or another, one religious belief or another, and so on, Rawls argues that rational humans will utilise a "maximin" principle. This means that they will design society to maximise the inevitable minimum positions within said society. By using this thought experiment to reshape our current society, Rawls believed that we could create a more just and fair society.