Until I come across John Rawls’ book, I have never thought the word Theory can be associated with Justice (公正).  I was reluctant to commit my leisure time to reading “theories” (my job gives me plenty already), but my better judgement was overridden by the charisma of the loaded buzzword of our time.  Don’t get me wrong: the book is worth reading.  However, getting through five hundred pages of hard (and dry) reasoning and argument—with few stories or quips to catch a break—was quite a mental exercise.  Well, here is what I have learned.

A theory of justice is a set of principles designed to resolve the conflict of interests arising from human cooperation.  These principles form the basis for regulating social behaviors and arranging political institutions.   Rawls’ theory, which earned him the reputation as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, is dubbed “Justice as Fairness”.   It consists of three principles. The first principle (A) guarantees an equal right to “most extensive” basic liberties.  The other two state social and economic inequalities are just if and only if they (B) are attached to positional goods open to all under conditions of equal opportunity, and (C) maximize primary goods enjoyed by the least advantaged members of society.  The three principles follow a lexical order: the equal liberty principle (A) takes priority, followed by the equal opportunity principle (B) and the difference principle (C).

At first glance justice as fairness seems decisively egalitarian.  Rawls advocates compensation for the “undeserved inequalities” from birth and natural endowment.  Under the difference principle (C), “society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into the less favorable social positions”.  An example is spending greater resources on “the education of the less rather than the more intelligent”.  In fact, Rawls has gone so far as to assert the willingness to make an effort is also contingent upon social circumstances. In other words, even inequalities caused by laziness may be undeserved and thus warrant social redress.    To be sue, Rawls does not support eradicating inequalities all together. Instead, inequalities are to be tolerated in so far as they benefit everyone, especially the most disadvantaged.    Moreover, positional goods should be distributed based on the equal opportunity principle, and if doing so leads to inequalities, so be it.  Thus, Rawls seems to prefer meritocracy to equal-outcome when it comes to positional goods. There is a catch though: everyone must “have reasonable opportunity to acquire the skills on the basis of which merit is assessed”.  Needless to say, compensations are necessary to meet such a requirment.

Rawls contends justice as fairness is preferred by moral persons at the original position.   He assumes moral persons know what is right (i.e., have a sense of justice) and what constitutes their own good.  As such, moral persons are entitled to equal justice. As Rawls puts it, “those who can give justice are owed justice”.   The original position, on the other hand, wraps everyone with a veil of ignorance. From behind this veil, nobody knows their social status or natural asset.  As a result, they cannot and will not tailor the principles to their own advantage.   Rawls’ moral persons are not altruistic, but mutually disinterested and rational.  This means they (i) strive to maximize their own good, as defined by the rational plan of life, and (ii) are indifferent to the good of others, in both absolute and relative terms.    Rawls’ faith in the better angels of our nature is admirable, but I am not sure our cravings for justice can resist the incessant onslaught of envy, vanity, and self-serving biases.   A society built on justice as fairness may be ideal, even optimal. But will it be stable?  Perhaps that’s what Benjamin Franklin had in mind when he proclaimed, “A republic if YOU CAN KEEP IT!”

Rawls staunchly opposes utilitarianism, the idea that a society is property arranged when its institutions maximize the net balance of welfare.  He believes “each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.”   Therefore, justice “denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others.”   These words ring so true as I am, like many of my friends are, trying to understand what the heck is going on in Shanghai.