Chapter
1
Introduction
I.1. Background and Significance of Study
As the twenty-first century begins, democracy is
probably the most popular form of government, though countries describing
themselves as “democratic” are often far from the ideal described below.
Democracy is acknowledged by most people as a good and acceptable way to govern
a society. A leader and members of a country, for instance, would be very proud
to describe their country as a democratic one.
By its definition, a democracy is a government which is
ruled by the people: In Greek, democracy = demos + kratos;
“demos” means “people,” and “kratos” means “rule.” In our time,
we seem to appreciate democracy as the best form of government compared to
other forms, such as dictatorship, oligarchy
or monarchy, because it is
established by the people and ruled by the people, and it cares for the
people’s basic freedoms, rights, equality and justice, whereas the other forms
are ruled by a single individual or selected group, who usually favor their own
group and may or may not care about other members as a whole. In these forms,
the rulers have more power than other members, whereas democracy is egalitarian
and ideally it regards everyone equally in the sense that they equally share
their political power as the basis of rights and freedom.
Thus,
democracy is appreciated because it promotes the basic rights and dignity of
human beings and the rights to freedom and equality.
However,
democracy, though generally accepted as the best form of government, has some
weak points concerning decision making when the questions of the controlling
majority, for example, in voting, is dominant. This seems philosophically to
ignore the minority groups, and they are not equal in privilege and rights
compared to the majority because their opinions are ignored. Moreover, the
minority’s basic liberty is threatened and even reduced because their voice is
rarely heard and they are ignored when the majority’s decisions are put into
practice. Thus, Tocqueville
(1835), and later J.S. Mill (1859), are right in asserting that democracy is “the
tyranny of the majority,” (see Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Version 1.0, London :
Routledge) and democracy, without
adequate protections for minorities, creates the dictatorship of the majority
Tocqueville and Mill described.
Due to this
weakness of democracy, Plato (427-347BC) and Aristotle (384-322BC), the two
great ancient Greek philosophers, never appreciated democracy. They denied that
democracy was the best form of government. Plato, for instance, as a disciple
of Socrates, witnessed the death of Socrates under the decision-making of the
majority under the Athenian democracy at his time. Thus, he never proposed
democracy to be the best form, because the majority’s opinion is not always
right and the minority’s opinion is not always wrong. Thus, he said the best
form of government a society can have, in terms of assuring the happiness of
the people, is one ruled by a philosopher; the ruler would be called “the
philosopher-king,” because he regarded wisdom as the greatest virtue to decide
on what is best for the country.
In the case
of Aristotle, although he understands democracy differently from the way Plato
does, he is more reasonable in judging democracy. In fact, he approves democracy because
it promotes freedom and lets the majority rule. However, he decries democracy if it means that “freedom and
equality mean doing as one likes,” (D.R. Bhandari, 1980, p73), and especially if the majority is ignorant with
regard to the technique of administration and so on. Thus, he proposes that
democracy in its best form is Aristo-democracy in the sense that “only the best citizens would present the
actual governing authority and machinery,” (D.R. Bhandari, 1980, p73), though he believes that the majority of the people have the greater
virtue and ability than the rest of the population.
It seems, then, that democracy is not the best
alternative for us when it puts all power in the hands of the majority, like
Plato and Aristotle said. However, we should take a look at what the realities
of “democracy” meant in the time of Plato and Aristotle. Unlike the democracy
today, the ancient democracy in Athens
Thus, democracy
as used in their time was insufficiently developed and ignored the values of
the majority of the people, the women and slaves. And respectfully speaking, we
cannot follow the forms of government proposed by Plato and Aristotle in our
world today as the world is becoming more and more global through information
technology and since people are becoming more and more educated, and they want
their opinions to be heard and recognized. The experience of people since
ancient days, and even the twentieth century, when the world was tormented by
the dictatorships of Hitler,
Stalin, and Pol Pot, for instance, has helped guide us in developing forms of democracy that are seen as the best kind
of government today. Modern democracy is appreciated insofar as it promotes
basic freedom and equality of the people, and allows people to be responsible
for their own destiny. Other forms of government, as mentioned above, are not
the best alternative because they are ruled by the one particular person or
group and their governance can be either good or bad depending upon the whims
of an individual or group, thus they seem unreliable if not dangerous or
tyrannical. They deprive the majority of the people of a voice in running the
nation.
It is morally
vicious when either the majority or the minority is ignored. Thus, we need
philosophical justification of the way a government operates so that the
philosophical justification is fair for both the majority and the minority in a
country which consists of various sub-minority groups with different
ethnicities and religious beliefs, etc.
Our main
concern here is that we make the idea of democracy, which promotes human basic
freedom and equality, better in the sense that it should care for all people,
not only the majority, but also the minority, and offer a stable way of securing
the liberties and rights of all the people of the country.
Morally
speaking, it is unacceptable and very dangerous to accept the idea that only
the majority has rights while ignoring the minority, or to accept the demands
of a minority while ignoring the majority. One example of disorder resulting
from ignoring the demands of a minority is the indiscriminant bombings and
murders that characterize terrorism[1].
They are a reaction by minority groups responding to perceived injustice and
unfairness on the part of the governing majority. Through it, the minority
attempts to manipulate government policies by raising chaos and disorder to an
intolerable level in the society, forcing the government to capitulate to the
terrorists’ demands.
The
researcher condemns terrorism and the violent actions performed by terrorists.
Such criminal activities create many problems and promote hatred in our world
by destroying many lives and much property. In fact, even when terrorism forces
the government to give in to the terrorists’ demands, it usually creates deep,
long-lasting resentment and a thirst for revenge on the part of the victims,
and dims hopes for peaceful co-existence between the groups in conflict.
To win the
hearts of the governing majority, I argue, violent means in any form, such as
terrorism, are never right because they create both mental and physical scars,
destroy property, and can lead to bad consequences in the future that can be
unimaginable. Rather than increase the nation’s wealth and the people’s
liberty, they diminish both.
It is
reasonable to suggest that the best alternative solution for perceived
unfairness is to win the hearts of the ruling people through peaceful and
nonviolent means, and there are good examples which have been used successfully,
as we have seen in the past century, for instance, the nonviolent civil rights
movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr. which touched the conscience of the
U.S.A. and abolished institutional
racial segregation in the United States, and the winning of the Indian
Independence from the British by swaying worldwide public opinion through the
nonviolent leadership of Mahatma Gandhi.
A well
designed democracy is seen as the best form of government by most philosophers
because it promotes freedom and equality of all the people, not only for the
majority but also for the minority groups as well. If correctly structured, it
can provide stability by giving everyone broad liberties, thus promoting
personal initiative and wealth building, and fair access to opportunity and at
least the minimum requirements for life. It will not be forced to capitulate to
terrorists because terrorist will have little credibility in a land where even
minorities are respected and cared for.
Utilitarian
Principles, Imperfect Justice: We see that where utilitarianism is practiced the idea of benefiting the
majority and ignoring individual rights creates problems because it denies
equality to individuals in the minority. When a proposal is made that will
benefit many or most people, such as the development of a large seaport, a
utilitarian democracy will ignore the rights of the few people living along the
shore of the bay, and seize their property in order to build the port. While
doing what is “best for most people,” it can move quickly and efficiently in
whatever direction it wants to, and it can become a very popular form of
government, and easily win public support for public projects, and because the
“majority” always profits from the projects, the government has a high
likelihood of being reelected time after time. Because utilitarianism is so
profoundly positive and influential in so many people’s daily lives, it has
been promoted as a form of democracy to be followed everywhere, serving as a
good example for every democracy’s thinking and practice. The utilitarian
principle holds that a policy or action is morally right if it is acceptable to
“most” and if it “produces the greatest happiness for the members of society”
(Kymlicka, 2002, p10).
The problem that this presents is this: democracy is desirable if and only if it promotes
the basic liberty and equality of the people as a whole, not only the majority,
but also the minority. What Rawls has contributed is a set of principles and
priorities that are based on a completely different and much more enlightened
way of determining what is truly “just” or fair or moral. Applying his principles is seen by his many
supporters to be an effective way to deal with and solve the problems of our
world today and far more effective and stable than utilitarianism. Since internal peace and stability often seem
to hinge on the perceived fairness or unfairness of government policies,
Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness, by preserving peace and stability, should
be seen as far superior to utilitarianism.
A Short Look at the Life of John Rawls
John Rawls
(1921-2002) was an American moral and political philosopher, and is regarded by
many people as the most influential and important moral and political
philosopher in our time. Rawls was born in Baltimore , Maryland February 21, 1921 .
He was raised in an upper-class southern family. He was the second of five
sons. In his early education, Rawls attended Kent
School , an Episcopalian preparatory
school in Connecticut ,
and graduated in 1939.
He entered Princeton
University US army and
served in New Guinea and the
Philippines , and, when World
War II ended, he served in Japan
and was one of the witnesses of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima . Because of his experience
of the war, he declined an offer of officer training and left the army as a
private.
He returned to Princeton
University Princeton . He received a Fulbright
Fellowship to Oxford University , where he was influenced by the liberal
political theorist and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin and, more strongly, the legal
theorist H.L.A. Hart.
Shortly after this, he returned to the United
States to take a position as Assistant professor, then
full professor at Cornell
University
Professor Samuel Freeman was a lawyer who was so
inspired by reading A Theory of Justice that he left the legal
profession for graduate work in philosophy, never dreaming he would have the
good fortune of studying with Rawls, becoming his professor’s good friend, and
eventually edit Rawls’s Collected Papers (Harvard University Press,
1999) and The Cambridge Companion to John Rawls (2003). He describes
Rawls as
. . . a quiet, modest, and gentle man.
He did not seek fame, and he did not enjoy the spotlight. A private
person, he devoted himself to research and teaching, or to relaxing with his
family and friends. He declined almost all requests for interviews and chose
not to take an active role in public life.
In part, that was because he felt uncomfortable speaking before
strangers and large groups, and often stuttered in those settings. (Freeman, “John Rawls, Friend and Teacher,”
pB12).
Freeman adds that Rawls was
a conscientious teacher. His
lectures were carefully prepared and written out, and he continually revised
them after reading the most recent scholarship and rethinking his positions. He
made his lecture notes available to his students, acknowledging that he
sometimes stuttered and was not sure that he could be understood. A better
reason, surely, is that his lectures were very intense and hard to digest upon
one hearing (or even two or three). (Freeman, “John Rawls, Friend and
Teacher,” pB12).
In 1995, twenty four years after publishing A Theory of Justice, Rawls
suffered several strokes. He retired from teaching, but continued to work out
his ideas about justice. Several works
appeared in the next years, and on November 24, 2002 , he died quietly at his home. He had
written his final book, The Law of Peoples, which contains the most
complete statement of his views on international justice.
Martha Nussbaum, a noted professor at the University of Chicago
the
most distinguished moral and political philosopher of our age. Rawls played a major role in reviving an
interest in the substantive questions of political philosophy. What makes a society just? How is social
justice connected to an individual’s pursuit of the good life?. . .The
influence of his ideas and his impact as a teacher. . . have made those
questions central to philosophy, and our age rich in arguments about justice,
respect, and Liberty. (Nussbaum, “The Enduring Significance of John Rawls,”
pB7).
As Professor Nussbaum suggests, in
leading philosophers out of the fruitless pursuits of logical positivism, Rawls
could freely express his fondness for Abraham Lincoln:
He admired Lincoln because he saw him as
the president who most appreciated the moral equality of human beings, and
because Lincoln
was the rare statesman who did not compromise with evil. [Rawls] frequently quoted Lincoln ’s assertion – “If slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong.” –
as the best example of a fixed moral conviction that anyone with a sense of
justice must believe. (Freeman, “John
Rawls, Friend and Teacher,” pB12).
His most influential work, A Theory of Justice (1971), has had a
profound impact on moral and political philosophy since its publication. He
proposes “justice as fairness,” as an alternative to the utilitarian theory.
Rawls considers utilitarianism a threat to basic human rights because it
initiates and justifies actions that provide the greatest benefits for the
majority of the people while ignoring the plight of the minority. This neglect
of the minority will ultimately bring about instability as members of the
minority resort to desperate means to have their needs met.
Thus, Rawls centers his theory on “justice as fairness.” Justice as fairness consists of a number of
egalitarian, moral and liberal ideas which, if applied in the institutions of a
liberal constitutional democracy, can justify its existence and serve as
guiding principles in its operations.
In regard to this, he proposes
two principles of justice which determine how social benefits are to be
distributed among individuals fairly and impartially. Rawls’s two principles of
justice hold that the practices of a government must affirm the priority of equal basic liberties over other political
concerns, and, moreover, they must require fair opportunities for all citizens
in regard to inequalities of wealth and social positions. The principles are as
follows:
a. Each person has an equal right to a
fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a
similar scheme of liberties for all.
b. Social and
economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions. First, they must be
attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality
of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged members of society. (Rawls, Political Liberalism, 1993, p291;
see A Theory of Justice, 1971, pp60, 302; and see A Theory of Justice:
Revised Edition, 1999, p53).
Later, we will refer to these
two principles, calling the first (a.) the Liberty Principle, and the second
(b.), which is divided into two parts, we will refer to as the Difference
Principle, providing maximum support for those with minimum advantages, and the
Equal Opportunity Principle, where it refers to opportunities to improve one’s
lot.
We will later discuss these
ideas at length, but right now let us return to the current question, “How
can we decide on what is fair, since we are living in a society that is unequal
and we may have different interpretations of what the good life means in regard
to each individual?” Rawls proposes a
new heuristic stratagem he
calls the original position that is a hypothetical situation which he
uses to see if a policy or practice is “fair” or just, and to justify the
principles a government follows. The original position is an impartial social
contract which provides a new approach to the traditional social contract
theories of Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant. Though
similar to the older theories, it is designed as a reasoning device to
determine whether a particular arrangement would be seen as fair and acceptable
to “rational” and “moral” individuals who are, under the rules of the device,
unaware of their own identity, gender, social class and so forth, and are thus
able to judge things objectively and impartially. He claims the results would be “fair” if
“reasonable” people would agree to the terms of the hypothetical contract, and
would be willing to live under its terms forever without the possibility of
undoing the agreement. Then, he claims, the terms of the contract are “just”
because they are reasonable and fair. This idea presupposes that people in the
original position agree with the basic principles of justice because they are
free and moral beings who are capable of a “thin” sense of justice and
goodness, yet they are operating under his unique “veil of ignorance,” situated
equally and ignorant of their particular situation in life, including
their race, gender, economic status, and so on when they finally agree rationally upon the principles they will follow
in order to secure their equal status and freedom, and to pursue freely their
conceptions of the good life.
As he puts it, in the original
position,
[n]o one is
able to design principles to favor his particular condition; the principles of
justice are the result of a fair agreement or bargain. For given the
circumstances of the original position, the symmetry of everyone’s relations to
each other, this initial situation is fair between individuals as moral
persons, that is, as rational beings with their own ends and capable, I shall
assume, of a sense of justice. The original position is, one might say, the
appropriate initial status quo, and thus the fundamental agreements reached in
it are fair. This explains the propriety of the name “justice as fairness”: it
conveys the idea that the principles of justice are agreed to in an initial
situation that is fair. (Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971, p12; see also
p19).
Thus, moral agents in the
hypothetical situation who are capable of having senses of justice and goodness
would agree on the principles, seeing them as just and fair and not a threat
any other individual’s basic rights and liberty.
To merit this respect, first of
all a principle must guarantee as much as possible the basic rights and
liberties of each individual equally, because it respects the basic dignity
of human being in general. The Liberty
principle is designed to do this. The other principle concerns the social and
economic inequalities which are acceptable only if they are managed so as to
help those who are the least advantaged.
Of course some critics attack
Rawls on this point. They argue that there is nothing wrong in pursuing the
benefits of one’s liberties if they do not harm anyone. Rawls replies to the
critics this way: Every one of us pursues our advantage; however, no
advantage can morally exist if it does not care for or benefit those who are
highly in need.
According to some critics, Rawls seems to start at the wrong point in his
theory of justice when he tries to create the “hypothetical contract” between
different rational people who may be members of different ethnic groups, with
conflicting interests. They ask, “How
can these people be ignorant of their own gender, status, religious beliefs,
and so on?” These kinds of criticisms typically arise from people with
“communitarian” tendencies, which will be described later. Rawls’s response to
this question would be:
In order to find out if a practice is fair or unfair, we must create an
imaginary situation, since no real situation can do the things we need to do to
determine whether rational people would accept a policy or other action. It is
only by imagining individuals existing for a short time in a state of selective
amnesia regarding their own self interest that we can ask them if they would
prefer living forever in Hypothetical Situation A or in Hypothetical
Situation B. They have no way of knowing whether either situation would
benefit or harm them personally in real life, because they do not know anything
about their own real life status. In making their decision to support this or
that action, they are agreeing to an imaginary contract which will, by the
rules of the ‘game,’ be a permanent and irrevocable choice. It is safe to assume that under this set of
rules, rational people with at least a ‘thin concept’ of morality will make a
conservative and fair choice. This choice would be something that others of
competing ethnic groups could accept and recognize as fair, for it would not
favor this or that group to the detriment of competing groups except by
offering the very worst off individuals special consideration in terms of
maximizing the benefits held out to the minimally well off, without robbing
anyone of the enjoyment of the widest liberty possible. Thus we can say that we
have established a system which leads us to true justice because it is fair to
all, and where inequalities exist, it favors the least well-off over those
wealthier or those of higher
status.
To give a simple example, imagine that two soccer teams have come
together to play a crucial game, but there are no certified referees there
except for Kalib, who is the assistant coach for the Green team. The Red team
agrees to let Kalib referee, but only if he takes a special pill which, for the
duration of the game, will render him unaware of his identity and his
association with the Green. After taking the pill, the Reds are sure he will make
every effort to be impartial, because if he chooses to favor one team over the
other, he might be harming his own team. He would realize that following the
rule book is his sole concern, and his calls would probably be much more
accurate than usual, because of his special impartial condition.
This is the kind of imaginary situation that must exist as the “hypothetical
contract” is formulated, for it establishes a set of conditions which transform
a rational person with an everyday amount of bias into a model deliberator
acting on pure reason rather than bias. This is accomplished by a special kind
of unawareness, called “the veil of ignorance,” which enables the deliberators
to formulate the “hypothetical contract” in an unbiased state of mind,
establishing the “original position” for the production of the principles of
fairness and justice that will be acceptable to all reasonable, rational, and
moral parties. Thus, the “veil of ignorance” is similar to the “special pill”
referred to in the soccer game example above.
Rawls’ original position device resembles the “natural state” earlier
philosophers described when discussing the old “social contracts” mentioned by
Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, and Kant. His “original position” is, then, a mental procedure
allowing us to visualize how good and reasonable parties in a liberal democracy
could function cooperatively in peace and harmony, without outbreaks of
violence and terror.
Moreover, people in the original position are represented as free and
equal individuals who hold moral powers in hand to contribute their
participation in social cooperation. The principles of justice present a good
and reasonable mental model for a democracy.
Applicability of Rawls’s Theory in Today’s
World
Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness is very relevant to our world
today, especially with regard to pluralistic societies. Rawls was American, and
he saw first hand how the United
States , as a country composed of many
sub-groups representing different races, cultures, beliefs and values living
together under the liberal democratic form of government, could serve as a good
example to other countries who claim the title “democratic country.” His ideas
contribute significantly to the philosophy of government and can be applied to
other societies on the grounds that we are all human beings and have similar
needs. Furthermore, not only the United States , but also other
countries consist of people of different religious beliefs, cultures, and moral
ideas that permeate their own personal lives and provide a social context in
which to find one’s identity and grow to become “somebody.” For example, in Canada
there are people who are Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and others, from a
variety of foreign nations, and with great differences in personal power and
wealth. As diverse as these groups may be, they are all Canadians. Other
liberal democracies have similarly heterogeneous populations which enjoy enough
stability and economic success to assure their longevity.
In his major later work, Political
Liberalism (1993), Rawls goes beyond the scope of his earlier work, A
Theory of Justice. In this work, he focuses more fully on the political
arena, especially on the problem of justice within a strongly pluralistic society
where many different groups are living together. He even proposes a second
version of the “original position,” which has members of groups, under the
special “veil,” deliberating and arriving at a contract that will satisfy the
various groups and provide long-term stability. This will be discussed later
and following.
He invites us to reflect on the idea of justice while recalling that in a
free society, people have religious, philosophical and moral views which are inevitably quite diverse; thus, the social
unity can be reached best through public reason that is based on a shared
public conception of justice. He considers Justice as Fairness the most
appropriate and reasonable basis for a social unity in diversity, because it is
a result of moral ideas which are shared by all citizens in the society,
considering that they are free and equal moral beings, and its main
concern is justice in terms of fair social cooperation. Its justification is
human reason, so it does not depend upon the principles of a particular
religion or philosophy of life.
His main concern is to provide
the public justification for justice as fairness which will be acceptable to
all citizens of a well-ordered democracy.
To the question of how people
from different comprehensive doctrines or backgrounds in a free society can
come together for an agreement to form a specific political conception or organization, he gives
his answer based upon the convincing idea of “overlapping consensus.”
The overlapping consensus model
can be applied to a free society where all citizens are free to express their
opinions and beliefs. Rawls maintains that an overlapping
consensus must have the
following three characteristics, namely:
It is a consensus of groups of people holding reasonable comprehensive
doctrines. It deals with reasonable or rational pluralism,
not simply pluralism, since Rawls argues that a free institution must
guarantee and provide its citizens liberty, justice and equality, so that the
citizens can exercise their rights and freedoms, and, according to Rawls,
pluralism and rational pluralism are different. In a pluralistic
society, people’s basic dignity, rights and liberty might not be guaranteed.
They may be governed by unjust, irrational, violent, and unfree institutions,
but in a rational, and especially in a reasonable pluralistic
society, people’s lives are in the fortunate conditions where the government’s
institutions care for their happiness, freedom, justice and equality, and the
like. Thus, according to Rawls, the overlapping consensus takes place
where there is justice and equality under the conditions of freedom, and
members of the reasonable pluralistic society who are associated with various comprehensive
doctrines are free to follow their own path and accept principles based on
human reason alone. As he puts it,
The fact of
reasonable pluralism is not an unfortunate condition of human life, as we might
say of pluralism as such, allowing for doctrines that are not only irrational
but mad and aggressive. In framing a political conception of justice so it can
gain an overlapping consensus, we are not bending it to existing unreason, but
to the fact of reasonable pluralism, itself the outcome of the free
exercise of free human reason under conditions of liberty. [Italics added.] (Rawls, Political Liberalism,
1993, p144).
The second characteristic of overlapping consensus is, in a
constitutional democracy the public conception of justice should be, so far as
possible, presented as independent of comprehensive religious, philosophical,
and moral doctrines. This implies that, first of all, justice as fairness
is seen as “a freestanding view that expresses a political conception of
justice. It does not provide a specific religious, metaphysical, or
epistemological doctrine beyond what is implied by the political conception
itself.” (Rawls, Political Liberalism,
1993, p144).
Of course, religious, philosophical, and moral considerations influence
our understanding, and this affects our decisions and actions. However, a political
standard has to be something beyond that, something that stands on its own
merit, based only on human reason, because tying basic constitutional
principles to one comprehensive doctrine, such as a religion, political
philosophy, or metaphysical view of the world, would be regarded as unfair and
unacceptable by people following a different or competing comprehensive
doctrine that this is the only way to bring about unity among the diverse elements
of society.
This idea of justice as fairness in Rawls’s argument is very clear. It
implies justice for all, regardless of any ideologies, beliefs, and so on in a diverse
society.
Differently from specific religious, epistemological, metaphysical or
moral doctrines, which have various ideologies and explanations to support each
system of belief, political thought must be free from any separate or
independent ideologies, and must imply universal standards of equal fairness
for every citizen in that society, yet it must respect the various beliefs of
diverse cultures because they form sensitive parts of human lives, feelings,
and values.
As Rawls mentions, “the political conception is a module [or] an
essential constituent part [of a society’s underlying philosophy], that in
different ways fits and can be supported by various reasonable, comprehensive
doctrines that endure in the society regulated by it.” (Rawls, Political Liberalism,
1993, pp144-5).
The third characteristic aspect of an overlapping consensus operating in
a rational pluralistic society is, it is enduring and promotes stability.
Rawls bases this on the principles of
moral psychology. He endeavors to demonstrate that citizens in a well-ordered
democratic society perform their actions with due regard to the principles of
justice, and, since people are rational beings and are capable of a sense of
justice and goodness, they will, in pursuing their plan in life, act from the
reasonable, good and just principles and accept the validity and value of the overlapping
consensus because it provides them peace and security which are necessary
for the enjoyment of liberty and equality. These positive and reasonable qualities
of human nature are considered to be rational instruments and it is
appropriate to cultivate these capacities by doing just things so that the
benefits of social cooperation can be achieved.
And of course, all the groups
believing in reasonable comprehensible philosophical, religious, and political
doctrines can acknowledge and appreciate the principles of the overlapping
consensus because first, they are based on universally accepted processes
of human reason, and second, they provide the stability a diverse and
pluralistic society needs, along with powerful guarantees of freedom and
equality.
We might think that Rawls’s
theory is similar to Marx’s theory of justice in the sense that it supervises
patterned distribution of goods and services to all people. However this overlooks
two important facts: first, Marx did not start his system as a simple patterned
plan for distributing the wealth while sustaining a liberal democracy with a
capitalist economic system. Instead, he declared capitalism and its treatment
of the workers vicious and attacked it at its roots, claiming that misery
springs from the fact that people like property owners and factory owners are
by their nature exploitive of their labor force and corrupt because they are
rich. He declared that the workers in a capitalist system are unhappy,
unproductive, and destructive because of “alienation” from the fruits of their
labor, from themselves, from their co-workers, and from humanity itself.
Instead of calling for
improvement in existing systems, he felt the only way to cure the ill of the
nineteenth century world, which, for him, was basically Europe, was to destroy
the entire government and seize the entire economic system, strip everyone of
the right to own anything but what their own labor produced, and replace the
“old order” with a new and egalitarian order, a classless society that would
produce a “workers’ paradise.” In short, his system promised to replace time
honored establishments and codes of law, even religious beliefs and
“counter-revolutionary” educators, politicians, and bureaucrats, and either
reeducate them, imprison them, or execute them.
This bleak view of the
“proletariat” and the “bourgeoisie” was not based on the kind of documented
evidence we demand today, which would cite a wide variety of specific cases to
support his claims. Instead, he based
his principles on what might be considered today insufficient evidence and
questionable generalizations. Instead of
looking forward to and leading a gradual “procedural” improvement in the lot of
the workers, which has resulted in the wealth and freedoms enjoyed by citizens
of liberal democracies today, Marx looked at the early stages of the
owner-worker arrangement in those places he lived in, using the tools he had at
his disposal, and, appalled by what he saw, he called for revolutions and
upheavals which would rid the world of capitalism and oppression of the masses
by people who owned the land and mines and factories where people worked. Unfortunately,
relationships between owners and workers had not evolved when he and Engels
wrote their Communist Manifesto that called for revolutions. Tragically, the
revolutions which followed were often disasters for the nations and peoples
involved. The workers, robbed of liberty, and the nations involved, stripped of
the talents and creativity of ambitious and ingenious capitalists, placed the
fate of industries, banks, communications, health care, education and
transportation in the hands of bureaucrats loyal to the ruling revolutionary
leaders and communist party doctrines and generally unresponsive to the needs
of the populace. Unfamiliar with and
hostile toward the workings of international trade, law, and finance, the
Marxist nations often made backward progress, delaying for nearly a century the
kind of development liberal democracies quickly came to enjoy. Untold numbers
of tragedies and broken lives followed as the monolithic bureaucracy, headed by
unscrupulous leaders or elitist cliques of party loyalists imposed unthinkable
suffering and even genocidal starvation, political correctness, and even the
aggressive take-over of neighboring countries in the name of “equality,” “agrarian
reform,” and “justice.”
It took most communist or
“socialized” countries decades of struggle to finally evolve into something
which resembles in some ways the freedoms and efficient economic practices that
liberal democracies developed generations ago without undergoing the
destructive and misguided revolutions that sprang from the blind acceptance of
and misapplication of the doctrines of Karl Marx.
On the contrary, Rawls does
not call for upheavals or revolutions, but provides a method for assuring that
people will continue to enjoy their basic right to private property and the
liberty to actively pursue wealth and power through legitimate businesses and
other pursuits, like professional sports, the arts, and other enlightened professions.
His Liberty principle
is a guarantee of freedom from undue government interference in one’s life, and
his Difference and Fair Opportunity principles are designed to produce benefits
for all. By preserving the right to property and wealth, Rawls preserves the
incentives that prompt the more able or ambitious to produce more goods and
services, and the resulting commerce works to the benefit of all and provides
enough goods to allow patterned distribution to perform its stabilizing
function.
Further, rather than calling for
a revolutions and a disruptive leap into an untested utopian system, Rawls’s
theory of justice assures stability by taking care of all factions, with any
inequalities being arranged to give the worst-off the greatest access to
advancement and the maximum possible share of patterned distributions of
benefits. In dealing with the many diverse
minority groups in a democracy, Rawls’s “overlapping consensus” scheme provides
the means of satisfying minority needs and assuring them that the government
does care about their needs and does respect their feelings. By insisting that
his principles of Liberty
and Difference be applied in lexical order, he maintains the supreme value of
liberty and at the same time assures that the freedoms of the less fortunate
individuals and minority groups as well as the well-to-do will be respected and
their welfare will be treated as a top priority.
Rawls’s constant critic,
Robert Nozick, the Libertarian, claims that any patterned distribution of
wealth or services must necessarily deprive those on the upper level of society
of their rights because it forces them into involuntary service to others by
taxing their income and giving it to the less well off. Some would agree with
him that, like Marx, Rawls advocates the unwarranted seizure of property or
wealth of the well-off and redistributing it to the poor through a scheme that
ignores the basic human rights to property and the fruits of one’s labor, and
unjustly seizes property or wealth by force of law from those more fortunate or
more industrious and ambitious people and gives it away to the poor, who in
some cases are not deserving of pity and have not merited help. Depriving the
wealthy of liberties and rights is vicious, and by lowering the rewards for
productive enterprise, it discourages capitalism and reduces the general wealth
of the nation, leaving less to distribute to the poor.
Rawls dismisses this by
pointing out that his Liberty
principle protects the wealthy by preventing instability, and is not aimed at
distributing the liberties themselves equally to all, since the poor will
always have less “liberty” of action and fewer options than the wealthy.
Instead, he insists that taxing the wealthy in a reasonably designed way does
not amount to servitude or slavery, and can be carried on in a civilized way
without violating due process or civil rights.
Nozick also feels that he has
no duty to help the less fortunate, especially if it deprives him of some of
what he earns by his own labor or enterprise. Rawls replies that, in any system
of social contract, there must be provisions made to relieve the worst off. His
system of obtaining agreement through the “original position” and “hypothetical
contract” provides a means of establishing what kind of sharing or redistribution
will be acceptable to every “rational” and “reasonable” person. Overlapping
consensus assures that minority groups will feel they are being treated
fairly, adding to the stability and promoting peace in the community.
The answer to Nozick’s
complaint about losing his liberty is found in Rawls’s insistence on the Liberty principle, which
has “lexical priority” over all other considerations. His principle demands
that rather than reducing liberty, the state should increase it for everyone to
the broadest possible extent, limited only when it comes into conflict with
other people’s liberty and tends to reduce the freedom of others.
In short,
Rawls’s idea of justice as fairness has offered a new justification for the
existence of government by introducing the “hypothetical contract” to replace
the traditional “social contract” of Rousseau and others. This new contract is
based on a concept of fairness and justice derived by rational people in the
“original position,” freed from self-interest and moral bias by his use of a
selective, imaginary amnesia or ignorance so that they follow their rational
sense of fairness to make arrangements that assure maximum liberty and access
to privileges, goods, and services for all, especially the least well-off
individuals in the society. This system promises to offer solutions to a broad
array of problems confronting the world today. His theory protects the
minorities while guaranteeing the greatest possible liberty to all, and a fair
and equitable arrangement for distribution goods and services to those with
least resources.
It is in this
way that Rawls contributed possible solutions for the problems of our world
today.
I.2. Research
Question
In this dissertation, I would like to propose a hypothesis that,
John
Rawls’s Theory of Justice as Fairness may be the best alternative to other
theories of distributive justice because, if applied well, it promises to
afford a government security and stability; the guarantees offered in his
Liberty, Difference, and Fair Opportunity principles offer a promise of
security to the people; the apparent fairness inherent in his unique
hypothetical contract system offers the possibility reducing terrorism and
providing long-term stability because it is designed to minimize the feelings
of unfairness or helplessness that lead to resentment among minorities and fuel
rebellion and terrorism. In applying Rawls’s theory to the affairs of the
liberal democracies of Europe, the U.K., and North America, following his
principles of fairness in business relations between nations and international global corporations, and in the
respect and care people must show for our planet and its living and non-living
beings it can show us the way to reduce terrorism, reduce national debts, and
show or reverse the damage our economies and lifestyles do to the planet, all
of which will benefit ensuing generations of humans and non humans that will
inhabit Earth in the coming years, centuries, and millennia.
To begin this
dissertation, the research will set out the scope of the research which will be
limited to the following topics:
1.
Utilitarianism
2.
Marxism
and socialism
3.
Libertarianism
4.
Communitarianism
5.
Liberalism
6.
Democracy
7.
Terrorism
and other violent actions
8.
Respect
for the planet
9.
Responsible
national finances
I.3. Objectives
This
dissertation has the following objectives:
1.
To
critically examine and explain John Rawls’s Theory of justice as fairness in
order to form a comprehensive understanding of it, to see how his original
position and hypothetical contract model theory are like and unlike the
traditional social contract theories, and show that his theory is soundly
constructed and designed to prevent unfairness and instability.
2.
To
demonstrate critically why Rawls’s theory is fairer and more reasonable than
other leading theories of Distributive justice that form the basis of most of
the criticism directed at Rawls by comparing it to and showing how it differs
from Utilitarianism, Marxism, Libertarianism, and Communitarianism. Moreover,
this research will also evaluate his theory in light of some of the Feminist
and Ethnic Minority Criticism directed at it.
3.
To
study Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness critically, showing its weaknesses
and strengths, to see if this research suggests that applying his theory might
help solve some of today’s worldwide problems such as instability and
terrorism, public debt, and global warming.
I.4. Definitions
of the Terms Used
* Democracy: The term “democracy” refers to the rule by the people,
which is different from the rule by a particular person or group. “It is a system of decision making in which
everyone who belongs to the political organism making the decision is actually
or potentially involved. They all have equal power. ”[2]
This implies that in terms of participation, everyone should share
their opinion in making decisions. As a citizen of a democratic country,
everyone has the right to vote for any representatives or proposals that they
think are best for their country. In democracy, each person counts, and the
person or proposal with the most votes wins.
* Equality: Politically
and philosophically speaking, equality is a controversial concept, but it is
important. It implies a state of being equal in terms of basic rights, freedom,
treatment, and value, which apply to all individuals equally in a group and
fairly for all under the law.
* Fairness: it
is the state of being fair, just, unbiased and appropriate.
* Justice: Justice is
one of the most important concepts in moral and political philosophy. Along
with other virtues, it plays an important role, establishing how one should
interact with others, and it is the chief virtue of social institutions.
Justice implies fairness; it demands fair and equal treatment so that
each individual can pursue their own good while not violating others’ rights.
Justice is closely connected to equality and morality; that is to say to be
just is to be fair.
* Liberty : Liberty means a state of being
politically, legally and morally free from any confinement, servitude and other
unjust actions. It implies the basic rights of each individual to act and
express themselves in their own decision.
* Terrorism: Terrorism is sometimes
defined as an unlawful
use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group
against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing
societies or governments. Usually, the terrorists are neither part of nor
officially serving in the military forces, law enforcement agencies,
intelligence services, or other governmental agencies of an established nation-state.
Terrorism advocates the creation and exploitation of
fear for bringing about political change. It has occurred throughout history
for various reasons: Its causes can be historical, cultural, political, social,
psychological, economic, or religious—or any combination of these. (See in
Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2004). The fear is created by use of bombs,
kidnappings, beheadings, and other violence aimed at targets that carry the
highest likelihood of getting media attention.
*
Violence: Violence is any kinds of mental and/or physical force which is used
to violate, abuse or kill other people or destroy or damage things in wrong and
unjust ways.
I.5. Limitation
of the Research
This dissertation intends to critically provide a
comprehensive understanding of John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness,
including his innovative hypothetical contract device, and will demonstrate why
his theory is fair and more reasonable than other distributive justice theories, such
as Utilitarianism, Marxism, Libertarianism and Communitarianism, which includes
criticism from Feminists and Ethnic Minorities; finally, it will show the
theory’s strengths and weaknesses, suggesting ways that his theory might help
solve some of today world problems.
This research limits itself by focusing on:
1.
Rawls’s
concepts of justice as fairness and other relevant ideas, such as principles of
justice as fairness, the role of original position, reflective equilibrium,
overlapping consensus, public reason, and the like
2.
The
traditional social contract theories of
Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Kant and others
3.
The
Distributive Justice Theories of Utilitarianism, Marxism, Libertarianism, Communitarianism
including Feminism and Minority, Democracy’s problems with terrorism and other
violent actions, and with diversity among religious beliefs, cultures, and
philosophical and moral doctrines.
I.6. Research
Methodology
This critical research study requires both primary and
secondary sources. The sources will be the books and articles in journals and
newspapers which are available in the libraries of many universities in Thailand , for instances, libraries of Assumption University ,
Chulalongkorn University ,
Thammasat University ,
Ramkhamhaeng University
Furthermore, the researcher consults also
teacher-experts on John Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness, watches the
news, i.e. CNN, and BBC, and reads the Bangkok Post and Wall Street
Journal newspapers, in order to make the research up to date and to have a
deeper understanding of current issues.
To avoid repeating research done by others on this
problem, the researcher has also searched the Assumption University
[1] Terrorism is considered as an unlawful use or
threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against
people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or
governments. Usually, the terrorists are not part of or officially serving in
the military forces, law enforcement agencies, intelligence services, or other
governmental agencies of an established nation-state.
Terrorism deliberates the creation and exploitation of
fear for bringing about political change. It has occurred throughout history
for various reasons: Its causes can be historical, cultural, political, social,
psychological, economic, or religious—or any combination of these. (See more in
Microsoft Encarta Reference Library 2004.)
[2] Ross Harrison: Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
Version 1.0, London
End of Chapter 1 Next Poast: Chapter 2
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