Outline Rawls' Theory of Justice

OUTLINE RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE

John Rawls was an American political philosopher concerned with justice in society, leading him to write his book ‘A Theory of Justice’. In it, he outlines how he believed justice in society could be found, the resulting theory often known as ‘Justice as Fairness’. He creates a hypothetical situation in which he believes the people in society would be able to make an unbiased decision of how the society should be ruled, and how equal everybody should be. What Rawls attempts to do is to reconcile the freedom of a free market capitalist system in which there are winners and losers, thus creating economies that produce outstanding goods and services based on supply and demand, with a socialist model which heals the wounds of those who fail in the capitalist free market.

This hypothetical situation created by Rawls is known as the ‘Original Position’. He believed that justice is formed by abstraction from all actual social conditions so as to appeal to rationality alone; this makes for a totally unbiased decision on the part of the people, because through the abstraction, everybody is equal in the Original Position. Central to the idea of the Original Position is the Veil of Ignorance. The Veil is essentially what makes everyone unbiased in the Original Position, ‘blinding’ them from their actual position in society; "no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like”. Rawls believed that only through the genuine ignorance of the details of one’s position in society, can unanimous agreement of the definition of justice be found. Rawls uses an analogy to help explain; the theory is about a cake that must be cut between 5 children. The analogy suggests if the one cutting does not know whether they are getting the first or the last slice, then it is in the interest of the cutter to cut...