A Theory of Justice

A Theory of Justice, published by Harvard University Press in 1971, is John Rawls‘s masterwork and the most influential work of political philosophy of the twentieth century. It revived the social contract tradition of John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant as an alternative to the utilitarianism that had dominated English-speaking moral and political thought, and set out a theory of justice as fairness that gave liberal democracy, and the welfare state, their most systematic philosophical foundation. It opens: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.”

At a glance

Published	1971; revised edition 1999
Written	Over nearly twenty years, from the paper “Justice as Fairness” (1958)
Subject	The basic structure of a well-ordered society
Key device	The original position behind a veil of ignorance
Answered by	Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974)

The argument

The subject of justice. The primary subject of justice, Rawls argues, is the basic structure of society — the way its major institutions (the constitution, the economy, property, the family) distribute rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation. These institutions shape people’s life prospects from birth, so their justice matters more than that of any individual act.

Against utilitarianism. The classical utilitarianism of Bentham, Mill and Sidgwick holds that society is just when its institutions produce the greatest net sum of satisfaction. Rawls objects that it extends to society the principle of choice for one person — sacrificing some present good for a greater future good — and so “does not take seriously the distinction between persons”. It could justify slavery or the persecution of a minority if the gains to the majority were large enough. “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.”

The original position. Rawls’s alternative is a hypothetical agreement. The principles of justice are those that free and equal rational persons would choose in an initial situation of equality, the original position. To make the choice fair, they are placed behind a veil of ignorance: “no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like… his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of his psychology”. They know the general facts of politics, economics and psychology, and that they want more rather than less of the primary goods — rights, liberties, opportunities, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect. Because no one knows how the principles will affect them in particular, no one can tailor them to their own advantage; the choice is fair, and its outcome is just.

The two principles. Rawls argues that in this position the parties would agree to:

First principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

Second principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged… and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

The principles are in lexical order: the first takes absolute priority over the second, so that no basic liberty may be sacrificed for economic gains; and fair equality of opportunity takes priority over the difference principle.

Why these principles. The parties’ choice is one under uncertainty in which the stakes are their whole lives and they cannot assign probabilities to the outcomes. In such a situation, Rawls argues, it is rational to follow the maximin rule — rank alternatives by their worst possible outcomes and choose the alternative whose worst outcome is best. The two principles guarantee a satisfactory minimum; utilitarianism might leave one in slavery or destitution. Parties could not make the agreement in good faith if they might later be unable to honour it — the “strains of commitment” — and the principles also support citizens’ self-respect, perhaps the most important primary good.

The difference principle and desert. The second principle permits inequalities — higher pay for doctors, entrepreneurs, engineers — only if they improve the position of the worst-off group, by providing incentives that increase the total product. Rawls argues that the distribution of natural talents, like the social class of one’s birth, is “arbitrary from a moral point of view”; no one deserves their greater natural capacity or a more favourable starting place. The difference principle “represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset and to share in the benefits of this distribution whatever it turns out to be”.

Institutions. Part Two applies the principles. Equal liberty requires constitutional democracy with liberty of conscience, freedom of thought, the rule of law, and the fair value of political liberties. Distributive justice requires institutions — a competitive market, a government ensuring fair equality of opportunity through education, a social minimum, inheritance and gift taxes — which Rawls later described as a “property-owning democracy”. He gives an account of the just savings principle between generations, and of civil disobedience — a public, nonviolent, conscientious act contrary to law, done to bring about a change in law or policy, addressed to the majority’s sense of justice — a theory written during the American civil rights movement and the Vietnam War.

Stability. Part Three asks whether a society governed by these principles would be stable: whether citizens raised in it would acquire a sense of justice strong enough to sustain it, and whether being just would be good for them. Rawls draws on moral psychology — the morality of authority, of association and of principles — and argues for the “congruence” of the right and the good. His later dissatisfaction with this argument led to Political Liberalism (1993).

Reflective equilibrium. Throughout, Rawls justifies his conclusions by reflective equilibrium: testing principles against our considered judgments about particular cases — that religious intolerance and racial discrimination are unjust — and adjusting each in the light of the other until they cohere.

Reception

The book transformed political philosophy, which had been considered dead in the analytic tradition. Its most famous critic, Rawls’s Harvard colleague Robert Nozick, defended a libertarian “entitlement theory” in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974). Economists debated maximin; communitarians attacked its conception of the self; feminists asked whether justice applied within the family; Amartya Sen proposed capabilities in place of primary goods. It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is read across the world.

In conversation

• The veil of ignorance — choose your society without knowing who you will be.
• Maximin — make the worst outcome as good as possible.
• Natural talents as a common asset — the morally arbitrary lottery of birth.