Review: A Theory of Justice by John Rawls

[wshaffer]

So, first off: this is a work of academic philosophy. I think it's very readable and entertaining for a work of academic philosophy, but this is probably not a book to take to the beach. It also helps if you've had a basic course in philosophy, or have recently read a book like Michael Sandel's Justice, because the book will be very hard going if you don't have at least a glimmer of an idea about utilitarianism or Kantianism.

So, why read Rawls? It's often asserted that Rawls's work is the philosophical basis for modern American liberalism. I think it would be more accurate to say that most modern American liberals have a set of intuitions about justice that happen to dovetail pretty well with Rawls's philosophy. But if you are a political liberal, and you feel it's important to have a sound philosophical basis for your liberalism, you've probably got to consider Rawls's position, even if you reject it.

Rawls starts with a pretty neat philosophical conceit: the idea that a just society is one that operates by rules that everyone would agree to if they chose a set of rules from behind "a veil of ignorance". In other words, without knowing what their society would look like, what position they might occupy in it, or even what sort of goals and interests they might have, what rules would people agree to be bound by? I like this idea, because it seems to me that you can accept the method without necessarily accepting Rawls's conclusions. Also, it seems to offer a way to get at an ethical conception that might not be so tightly bound to a particular philosopher's societal circumstances. Kantianism seems so well-suited to the mind-set of an Enlightenment German Protestant non-conformist that one can't help be a bit suspicious of its general applicability.

Though, in all fairness, I have to admit that the rules that Rawls comes up with seem very well suited to the mind-set of a mid-20th century American liberal. He proposes two rules for a just society, which are to be applied in the following order:
1. Everyone should have the maximum liberty that is consistent with everyone having the same liberty.
2. Social and economic advantages should be distributed under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, and inequalities in the distribution of such advantages should be allowed only to the extent that such inequalities benefit the least well-favored in society.

We get to these rules about 100 pages in. The rest of the book is devoted to explaining what they mean and how they would be applied. It's fascinating stuff, but it defies easy summary. One of the most tricky parts of Rawls's theory is the part about inequalities benefitting the least well-favored - in fact, it's not unusual to see critiques of Rawls that focus exclusively on that, and ignore the rest of his argument. Occasionally you see people go on as if Rawls supported some kind of Harrison Bergeron-like state of absolute enforced equality. This seems silly, since it's hard to see how such a society would be consistent with the principle of maximum liberty (which takes priority over the other principle). Rawls potentially allows for staggeringly large degrees of economic or social inequality, as long as it can be demonstrated that these inequalities benefit the least well-off. Actually doing such a demonstration is left to the economists or the sociologists. Which makes a lot of sense. It's just a bit disappointing to read a 500+ page book on justice, and find that there are still lots of hard questions left to be answered.

Still, if forming a perfectly just society were easy, we'd have done it by now.

Anyway, this book is not an easy read, but it's well worth reading. I think that even if you disagree with its conclusions (or, like me, think you at least need more time to think about and digest its conclusions), it will change the way you think about justice.