A Theory of Justice

Introduction

A Theory of Justice is the 1971 book by John Rawls that revived political philosophy as a major subfield of analytic philosophy and produced the most influential single work in twentieth-century English-language political theory. The book is long (about 600 pages in the original edition), systematic, and rigorously argued; it presents the theory called justice as fairness through a contractarian framework that draws on the social contract tradition of Locke, Rousseau, and Kant while developing the framework in directions distinctively shaped by twentieth-century analytic methods.

The book had immediate and lasting impact. Before A Theory of Justice, political philosophy was widely treated as a minor historical subfield within analytic philosophy; after the book, it became one of the major active research areas, and the post-Rawlsian literature (in agreement, in extension, and in opposition) has continued to organize contemporary work for over fifty years. The book has been translated into more than forty languages, and the Rawls-influenced literature spans philosophy, political theory, jurisprudence, economics, and the broader social sciences.

Composition

Rawls had been working on the materials of the book since the early 1950s. The early papers — Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics (1951), Two Concepts of Rules (1955), Justice as Fairness (1958), The Sense of Justice (1963), Distributive Justice (1967), The Justification of Civil Disobedience (1969) — developed the framework that the 1971 book systematized. The composition was unusually long; Rawls reported that he had originally planned a much shorter book on distributive justice and that the systematic ambitions grew over the years of composition.

The book was widely anticipated within professional philosophy before publication. Stanley Hoffmann and others had reported on portions of the work-in-progress; the Harvard graduate program in political theory had been organized around Rawls's framework for several years. The 1971 publication was immediately recognized as a major event.

Rawls produced a revised edition in 1999 that made editorial changes, especially to the sections on civil disobedience and the moral psychology, and that incorporated revisions Rawls had been making across the intervening decades. The revised edition is now the standard scholarly text, though the original 1971 edition remains in print and is the version most-cited in the early secondary literature.

Central doctrines

The original position

The central thought experiment is the original position. Rational agents are asked to choose the principles that will govern their shared social arrangements behind a veil of ignorance — they do not know what position they will occupy in the resulting society (rich or poor, talented or untalented, in the racial majority or minority, of the dominant or marginalized religion, even what historical period they will live in). The veil of ignorance ensures fairness: the agents cannot choose principles that would benefit positions they know they occupy because they do not know which positions they occupy.

The parties in the original position are not actual people deliberating about actual political arrangements; they are theoretical constructions whose function is to model the conditions under which fair principles of justice could be chosen. The framework is contractarian in inheritance (it draws on the social contract tradition through Locke, Rousseau, and Kant) but distinctive in its specific apparatus.

The parties are rational (they want to advance their interests), they are mutually disinterested (they are not motivated by either envy or altruism), and they have general knowledge (they know the basic facts of political sociology, economics, and human psychology) but lack specific knowledge of their own position. From these conditions, Rawls argues, the parties would converge on two principles of justice.

The two principles

First Principle: Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all.

Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: (a) they are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (b) they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (the difference principle).

The two principles are lexically ordered: the first principle takes priority over the second, and within the second, fair equality of opportunity takes priority over the difference principle. The lexical ordering means that the basic liberties cannot be traded for economic gains and that fair opportunity cannot be traded for greater benefit to the least-advantaged.

Maximin reasoning

The argument that the parties in the original position would choose the two principles rather than alternative principles (utilitarianism, perfectionism, mixed views) turns on the maximin rule of choice under uncertainty. The maximin rule directs the chooser to select the option whose worst outcome is best (to maximize the minimum). The veil of ignorance creates conditions under which maximin reasoning is appropriate: the parties cannot estimate probabilities of being in particular positions, the stakes are high (a lifetime in society), and they cannot bear the worst outcomes that other principles might produce.

The maximin argument has been continuously contested. Critics (especially John Harsanyi, the major utilitarian critic) argue that maximin reasoning is not the rational choice under uncertainty and that utilitarian expected-utility maximization is more appropriate. Defenders argue that maximin is the appropriate response to the specific conditions of the original position. The debate has been one of the most-engaged in the contemporary literature on rational choice and the foundations of political philosophy.

Reflective equilibrium

The methodological framework of the book is reflective equilibrium. The theorist begins with considered moral judgments about particular cases (slavery is wrong; religious intolerance is wrong; gross inequality of opportunity is wrong); develops theoretical principles that systematize these judgments; revises judgments and principles iteratively until the judgments and principles cohere. The method does not give foundational priority to either intuitions or principles; it works toward a stable equilibrium in which both are mutually adjusted.

The method has been continuously influential. The contemporary literature on moral epistemology, on the methodology of political philosophy, and on the broader question of how normative theories can be justified all engage Rawls's framework.

Reception

The book's reception was immediate and substantial. Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) gave the major libertarian critique, arguing that the difference principle illicitly licenses redistribution of legitimately acquired property. Michael Sandel's Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982) gave the major communitarian critique, arguing that the original position presupposes a metaphysics of the unencumbered self that no actual political community could endorse. G. A. Cohen's Rescuing Justice and Equality (2008) gave the major egalitarian critique from within the Rawlsian tradition, arguing that the difference principle does not go far enough.

The feminist reception (especially through Susan Moller Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family, 1989) argued that Rawls's framework inadequately addresses gender inequality and the structures of the family that produce it. Charles Mills's The Racial Contract (1997) developed the parallel critique with respect to race, arguing that the social contract tradition (including its Rawlsian version) presupposes the racial conditions under which actual democratic societies have developed without acknowledging them.

The positive reception has been even larger. The Rawlsian tradition through Thomas Pogge, Samuel Freeman, T. M. Scanlon, Thomas Nagel, Joshua Cohen, Amy Gutmann, and many others has developed the framework across multiple subfields. The deliberative democracy tradition through Cohen, Gutmann, and Dennis Thompson develops Rawlsian themes; the contemporary capabilities approach through Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum is in part a response to Rawls; the global justice literature through Pogge, Charles Beitz, and Allen Buchanan extends the Rawlsian framework to international relations.

Rawls himself revised the framework. Political Liberalism (1993) responded to the recognition that A Theory of Justice had presupposed a comprehensive Kantian moral conception that not all members of a democratic society could be expected to share; the book developed the framework of political (as distinct from comprehensive) liberalism that could be the object of overlapping consensus among citizens with different comprehensive doctrines. The Law of Peoples (1999) extended the framework to international relations.

Place in the wiki

A Theory of Justice is the canonical work of twentieth-century English-language political philosophy and the principal source for justice as fairness, the original position framework, the two principles of justice, and the methodology of reflective equilibrium. It is the foundational text for almost all subsequent analytic political philosophy.

Further reading

• Rawls — the author
• Analytic Philosophy — the tradition the book operates within
• Kant — the major moral-philosophical influence on the framework
• Mill — the utilitarian alternative the book engages
• Utilitarianism — the major alternative tradition
• Justice — the concept the book develops

Rawls's 1971 work that revived political philosophy as a major analytic subfield and produced the most influential single work in twentieth-century English-language political theory.