Phil 190R – Fall 09 Questions on Chapter Two

Anderson

1. Section Ten

In Rawls’ work, there are two moral subjects: institutions and individual conduct. Social justice is primarily concerned with the former. Conduct occurs within institutions. The evaluation of our conduct depends in important ways upon the institutional ground rules that regulate the assignment of benefits and burdens. So understood, it follows that the particular firm you happen to be working for is a social institution, because the firm determines your pay, hours of work, working conditions, etc. But since Rawls is interested in the justice of an entire society, the focus is on larger social institutions of which the firm you work for is but a small part. These include: the economic system (or systems) together with the ground rules that define what it can and cannot do, the legal system, constitution and type of government, the regulation of civil practices such as the family, along with the procedures for enforcing the rules in all of the above. It is also important to note that the ground rules of a just society are public and therefore knowable and subject to modification by deliberate human endeavor. An unjust society may have plenty of secret rules. Of course not every rule of an institution in a just society must necessarily be public (e.g. the rules governing personnel decisions in a firm), but the basic ground rules that allow for that would be public.

(a) Which then, of the following, would qualify as major social institutions in our society: the Internet, the mass media, the private health insurance industry, the Fortune 500 (largest corporations), the military-industrial complex, NAFTA. Briefly explain your answer.

(b) Can a person be a participant in a major social institution and not realize it?

(c) Give an example of a principle of justice for institutions that would not be a principle of individual conduct.

2. Section Eleven

Rawls’ first principle of justice is a list of basic liberties that everyone is entitled to. (a) What is his criterion for distinguishing a basic liberty from a non-basic one? Give an example of the latter.

(b) The equal basic liberties principle takes absolute priority over the difference principle in the sense that justice forbids giving up a basic liberty in exchange for some material gain or increased security. Give an example of this sort of prohibited move.

(c) The difference principle is concerned with the distribution of “primary goods”. What is his criterion for being a primary good. Give an example of a non-primary good.

3. Section Twelve (You can skip pp.59-61 of the subsection titled “The Principle of Efficiency”.)

(a) Many political conservatives and libertarians endorse something like what Rawls calls the system of Natural Liberty. What are the central features of this system? Why does he think it is seriously lacking in social justice?

(b) Likewise, many political liberals endorse something like what Rawls calls the system of Liberal Equality. The key difference between Natural Liberty and Liberal Equality is in the way equality of opportunity is understood. What is the difference between formal equality of opportunity and fair equality of opportunity?

(c) Rawls argues that the system of Liberal Equality still falls short of our conception of a truly just society. As Rawls sees it, a just society would try to minimize the “contingencies of life”; those sorts of barriers to living a good life which individuals are powerless to do something about but that society, acting collectively, can somehow mitigate or correct for. The system of liberal equality attempts to minimize the effects of class differences (of wealth, status and power) through fair equality of opportunity. But even if that is done, differences in the distribution of natural abilities and talents and differences within families can still have a significant effect on one’s expectations in life. The Difference Principle is needed, so Rawls thinks, as a way of mitigating those differences. Just how the difference principle is supposed to work has yet to be explained, but we can still ask at this point “Does a truly just society really have to correct somehow for natural differences of ability and talent?” How would you answer this question and what is your justification?