Reader’s Guide: Rawls – A Theory of Justice, Ch.2 – The Principles of Justice (§10-17)

In today’s Reader’s Guide, we examine Chapter 2 of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, entitled “The Principles of Justice”. At the beginning of the chapter, Rawls divides the theory of justice into two main parts: (1) (a) an interpretation of the initial situation and (b) a formulation of the various principles for choice there, and (2) an argument establishing which principles would be chosen. This chapter focuses on 1(b): that is, it introduces the two principles of justice Rawls will later argue (Ch. 3) would be chosen in the original position. In addition, the chapter introduces the idea of formal justice, the idea of an institution, and formulates “several principles [of justice] that apply to individuals” rather than to institutions. In this post, I focus on the first and main part of the chapter §10-17, which deals with provides an interpretation of Rawls’ principles of justice for institutions.

10. Institutions and Formal Justice

Institutions

Rawls reminds us that the basic structure is the primary subject of justice. This means that “principles of justice for institutions must not be confused with principles which apply to individuals” (47). But what is an institution? For Rawls, it is ‘a public system of rules’ –that’s the key –‘ which defines offices and position with their rights and duties, powers and immunities, and the like’ (47). Thus, institutions include things like games, rituals, parliaments, markets and systems of property.

Such institutions can be thought of in two ways: (A) as abstract object – a possible form of conduct expressed by a system of rules, or (B) as the practical realization of that system of rules. That say an institution is (un)just is to say its realization would be (un)just. Such institutions are realized when ‘actions specified by it are regularly carried out in accordance with a public understanding that the system of rules defining the institution is to be followed’. Thus parliament exists when ‘people perform the appropriate actions…with a reciprocal recognition of one another’s understanding that their conduct accords with the rules’ (48).

It is important for Rawls that institutions are public systems of rules. That means that people know certain things about their institutions: they know what the rules are, and that others know those rules (not always, but it’s a simplifying assumption Rawls makes). The principles of justice are also rules in this public sense. The publicity of PJs and institutions condition “insures that those engaged in [an institution with certain rules] know what limitations on conduct to expect of one another; they provide ‘a common basis for determining mutual expectations’ (48). This kind of publicity is extremely important for Rawls: a well-ordered society is one governed by a public conception of justice, and later Rawls will argue the PJs are chosen with the knowledge that they will be public.

Rawls then distinguishes between:

• Two kinds of rules: (a) constitutive rules, which define an institution, and (b) strategic rules for how to best use the institutions for particular purposes. (b) are not part of the institution.
• A single rule (or group of rules) – a particular institution – and the basic structure as a whole. One of the rules (or institutions) might be unjust without the whole might not be. To appraise a society, we need to know how the central institutions work together.

Formal Justice

When a conception of justice is ‘impartially and consistently administered’ by its institutions – such that similar cases are treated similarly, and the rules are regularly adhered to—Rawls call this formal justice. Formal justice requires that “in their administration laws and institutions should apply equally…to those belonging to the classes defined by them” (51).

This is a weak criteria for justice [although it is one many societies still do not meet]. A law may be equally executed and administered (thus, formally just) and still be substantively unjust. However, formal justice itself ‘excludes significant kinds of injustice,’ such as partial handling of cases, or arbitrary decisions. It thus ‘supports and secures [the] legitimate expectations’ of the citizens, whatever they are.

Ruling out such injustices is significant, but not sufficient for substantive justice. In any case, the relationship between formal and substantive justice can only be assessed what substantive conception of justice we ought to have.

11. Two Principles of Justice

Provisional Statement

Rawls then provisionally introduces (the final statement is given in §46; Rawls revises this statement in his later work) his own conception of justice, given by the following two principles:

First: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others.

Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all.

(Rawls will clarify these ideas more extensively later. He does not expect things to be fully clear now). Rawls comments on them:

1. The principles apply to the basic structure (BS), and suppose that the BS can be divided into two parts (one securing liberties, the other distributing goods).
2. The first principles contains a list of liberties- political liberty, freedom of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience, and the like. It does not read the most extensive scheme of liberty (read: negative freedom) compatible with equal liberty for all. Liberties not on the list – e.g. the right to private ownership of the means of production –are not basic. The only justification for circumscribing basic liberties is that they would interfere with another.
3. One applies the second principle by first assuming (b) is met and then maximizing the benefits (for the worst off).
4. The principles are in serial order –the first principle is prior to the second. Basic liberties cannot be sacrificed for the greater good.

The General Conception

Rawls suggests the two principles can be viewed as an expression of the following, more general conception of justice:

All social values – liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social basis of self-respect –are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.

On this conception injustices are simply (relevant) inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. Rawls will largely leave this general conception aside and focus on the two principles, but he explains the conception as follows.

First assume the BS distributes primary goods (a key Rawlsian idea). Primary goods (PGs) are ‘things that every rational man is presumed to want…goods [that] normally have a use whatever a person’s plan of life’ (54). Primary goods are of two kinds: social and natural. Social PGs include rights, liberties, opportunities, income, and wealth (and, later, the social basis of self-respect). Natural PGs include health, intelligence, and imagination. The BS can only directly control the distribution of social PGs.

Imagine that all social PGs are equally distributed. This is the benchmark for improvement. If certain inequalities of wealth would make everyone better off, they would be justified. But the presupposition is for equality.

Clarifying the Principles

Rawls’s two principles are distinct from the general conception in that they rule out exchanging basic liberties for economic and social gains.  The application of the principles to institutions implies that ‘basic liberties are defined by the public rules of the basic structure’.

In applying the second principle to persons, the reference is to the ‘representative person’ holding a certain social position (read: class). For example representative individual of a particular social position Rawls assume it is possible to assign an ‘expectation of well-being’ (read: allotment of social primary goods): their life-prospects viewed from their social station. These expectations are related to one another – raising the prospects of one representative person might lower or raise the prospects of another.

Rawls concludes with a problem: the second principle says that inequalities must be to the benefit of all. That means each person, from their social position, must prefer the inequality to its absence. To make sense of this idea, we need to specify the principle further. The sections §12 introduces three interpretations of the second principle,§13-14 defends Rawls’s specification of its two parts respectively.

12. Interpretations of the Second Principle

Rawls’ second principle contains two ambiguous phrases – ‘everyone’s advantage’ and ‘equally open to all’—each of which admits of two meanings. Holding the first principle consent, that produces four possible interpretations:

	“Everyone’s advantage”
“equally open”	Principle of efficiency	Difference principle
Equality as careers open to talents	System of natural liberty	Natural Aristocracy
Equality as equality of fair opportunity	Liberal equality	Democratic equality

 

Assume, for all interpretations, the first principle is satisfied. Rawls ranks this conceptions in order of their accuracy: System of Natural Liberty

The Principle of Efficiency

The principle of efficiency is simply Pareto optimality, applied to economic and social arrangements. A situation is efficient (Pareto optimal) when it is impossible to make anyone better off without making someone worse off.  The principle of efficiency does not by itself select a particular distribution – it can be satisfied by a number of different distributions.

Applied to the basic structure, ‘we can say that an arrangement of rights and duties…is efficient if and only if it is impossible to change the rules…so as to raise the expectations of any representative man…without…lowering the expectations of some…other”. There are many such potentially efficient arrangements; the problem is to single out one.

Rawls rejects the idea that ‘as long as the social system is efficient there is no reason to be concerned with distribution’. He rejects it because, first, under certain conditions ‘serfdom cannot be significantly reformed without lowering the expectations of some…representative man’ (the landowner, say) [more generally, in a class society, one can always maximize the expectations of one class; given this maximization, any departure would make someone worse off]. So, pure Pareto optimality fails as a principle of justice.

System of Natural Liberty

The system of natural liberty attempts to account for this problem by constraining the principle of efficiency by certain background institutions: namely, ‘arrangements implicit in the conception of careers open to talents’—i.e. formal equality of opportunity combined with a free market. Formal equality means that all have the same legal rights of access to all advantaged social positions; a free market is compatible with publicly owned means of production.

The thought behind the system of natural liberty (SNL) view is this: if a certain given efficient initial distribution of assets – income, wealth, natural talents, and abilities—is just, then ‘we must accept the basis upon which over time the initial distribution of assets is determined’ (62). This means: take a free market regulated by formal equality of opportunity, and it let run; whatever the outcome, it is just. The SNL makes no effort to preserve equality.

Rawls thinks this view is flawed. Any initial distribution at time t_n ‘is strongly influenced by natural and social contingencies’ –i.e. it is the cumulative effect of prior distributions (at t1…t2, etc) of natural asserts (talents and abilities). But, if so, SNL ‘permits distributive shares to be improperly influenced by’ factors (the contingent distribution of natural asserts, and luck) which are ‘arbitrary from a moral point of view’.

[This can be read as an argument against Nozick].

Liberal Equality

Liberal equality seeks to ‘mitigate the influence of social contingencies and natural fortune on distributive shares’ by strengthening the equality of opportunity component of the second principle: rather than interpreting it as formal equality of opportunity (EO), it interprets it as fair equality of opportunity. Fair equality of opportunity is formal EO plus: positions are not only open in a formal sense, but all should have a fair chance to attain them. That means those who have the same talent and willingness have the same prospects: expectations of those with the same natural assets ‘should not be affected by their social class’.

Practically, this means imposing ‘further basic structure conditions on the social system – namely, institutions which ‘preserve the social conditions necessary for fair EO’. For example, institutions ‘preventing excessive accumulations of property [social maximum] and wealth and of maintaining equal opportunities of education [equal access to education]’.

The liberal interpretation, though preferable, is still ‘defective, according to Rawls, for two reasons.

First, liberal equality ‘still permits the distribution of wealth and income to be determined by the natural distribution of abilities and talents’: outcomes are decided by natural lottery, which is arbitrary from a moral point of view (this is the same argument deployed against SNL).

Second, ‘the principle can only be imperfectly carried out’ because the development of one’s natural asserts ‘is affected by all kinds of social conditions and class attitudes’ (64). In particular, Rawls notes that the desired minimization of luck and fortune can never be pulled off ‘as long as some form of the family exists’ because the development of natural talents is ‘dependent upon happy family and social circumstances’.

Rawls concludes that “it is impossible in practice to secure equal chances of achievement…for those similarly endowed, and therefore we [should] adopt a principle which recognizes this fact and also mitigates the affects of the natural lottery” (64).

Natural Aristocracy

Natural Aristocracy (NA) combined formal EO with the difference principle (DP): careers are open to all formally, but the advantages attained by the talented are limited to those that benefit the worst off. NA faces a similar problem: it makes no attempt to regulate social contingencies and these are just as arbitrary as natural ones.

Rawls then turns to his own conception – democratic equality (DE) –in the next section

13. Democratic Equality and the Difference Principle

Democratic equality combines fair equality of opportunity (discussed in §14) with the difference principle (DP). The difference principle ‘removes the indeterminateness of the principle of efficiency by singling out a particular position from which social and economic inequalities…are to be judged’. That particular position is that of the worst off. Thus, the difference principle holds that benefits to the better situated are just only if they improve the expectations of the least advantaged members of society.

Rawls then explains the idea of the DP through the use of various indifference curves (I won’t repeat the analysis here). Instead, let’s focus just on the reasoning Rawls gives concerning the application of the DP to social classes.

Suppose that in some society there is an entrepreneurial class (the best off) and an unskilled laboring class (the worst off). What can justify their initial inequality in life prospects? According to the DP, the inequality is justified only if it raises the expectations of the representative unskilled worker; that is, the inequality is permissible only if lowering it would make the worker worse off.

Now why might an inequality actually improve the prospects of the worst off? Rawls thought is that

the greater expectations allowed to entrepreneurs encourage them to do things which raise the prospects of the laboring class. Their better prospects act as incentives so that the economic process is more efficient, innovation proceeds at a faster pace, and so on.

Importantly, Rawls qualifies this claim as follows:

I shall not consider how far these things are true. The point is that something of this kind must be argued if these inequalities are to satisfy by the difference principle.

In other words, Rawls is only suggesting the form of an argument that would have to be made in order to defend an inequality by the lights of the DP. This kind of argument is typically called an incentives argument.

Rawls then makes several further comments on the DP.

First, he distinguishes between two kinds of cases:

• A case in which the expectations of the worst off are maximized (a perfectly just scheme)
• A case in which the expectations of the better off contribute to those of the worst off, but the expectations are not yet maximized: higher expectations would raise the prospects of the worst off further (a just scheme, but not the best).

Both cases meet the DP, but (1) is preferable. Rawls distinguishes these from a further case:

• A case in which ‘the higher expectations’ are excessive (i.e. fail to meet one of the principles of justice).

Rawls notes they are several ways a set of expectations can be excessive. They can: (1) fail to meet fair EO, (2) violate equal liberty, or (3) fail the DP test. Rawls does not try to measure degrees of injustice, but these considerations suggest some criteria for doing so.

Second, Rawls suggests that the DP is compatible with the principle of efficiency, and avoids the problems of leaving two much to social/natural contingency discussed in §12.

Third, Rawls notes that there are different ways to make sense of the idea that the DP provides for an arrangement it which everyone is advantaged. One would be to compare everyone’s position with a hypothetical initial arrangement. Another would interpretation would make a few assumptions: chain connection and close-knitness.

Chain connection obtains when an improvement to the worst off raises the expectations of all social positions in between (the worst and the best off): e.g. an improvement to unskilled workers raises the prospects of the skilled.  Expectations are close-knit when “it is impossible to raise or lower the expectation of any representative person without affecting the expectations of every other representative person. If these conditions obtain, then an improvement for the worst-off is likely to improve the lot of all.

Rawls does not speculate on whether these two assumptions hold, but he notes that two features of a well-ordered society make it plausible (a) that all have certain common interests, and (b) that offices and positions are open. If these relations do not hold, however, Rawls notes that a more complicated version of the DP – the lexical DP –comes into play. The principle says that once the expectations of the least well-off group have been maximized, then the expectations of the next least well-off group should be maximizes.

Rawls then gives his final statement of the second principle:

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

In the final paragraph, Rawls distinguishes between the DP and the maximin criteria. The latter is a rule for choice under uncertainty, while the DP is a principle of justice for the basic structure. In this section, Rawls has clarified part (a) of the DP; in the next, he explains (b) in more detail.

14. Fair Equality of Opportunity and Pure Procedural Justice

In this section, Rawls considers part (b) of the second principle – the liberal principle of fair equality of opportunity (hereafter, simply FEO) – and its relation to pure procedural justice.

The argument for FEO does not depend on efficiency; rather, it ‘expresses the convinction that if some places were not open…at all, those kept out would be right in feeling unjustly treated [whether they benefit or not].” The unjust treatment consists in their being debarred from the sort of self-realization that comes from ‘exercise of social duties’.

Then, Rawls introduces the idea of pure procedural justice. The intuitive idea here is to ‘design the social system so that the outcome is just whatever it happens to be, at least so long as it is within a certain range’ (74). The idea can be clarified by a comparison with perfect and imperfect procedural justice.

Perfect procedural justice obtains when: (a) there is an independent criterion for fair division, and (b) it is possible to devise a procedure that is sure to give the desired outcome. Rawls’ example here is cake-division: the obvious solution is equal division, and the procedure is to ‘have one man divide the cake and get the last piece’. Such cases are rare.

Imperfect procedural justice is exemplified by a criminal trial. Here, the desired outcome is a conviction of the guilty, and a acquittal of the innocent. But there is no procedure that can be designed to always produce the correct result. So obtains (a), but not (b).

Pure procedural justice obtains when the opposite is true: there is no independent criterion for the right outcome, but there is a correct procedure whose outcome is just, whenever it is properly followed. The classic example if gambling: if certain conditions obtain, the end distribution after a game of poker is fair, regardless of what it is.

Applying the idea of pure procedural justice to the basic structure requires developing a background of just institutions – both a just political constitution and just set of economic and social arrangements. FEO plays this role: it helps ensure that background justice, so that whatever outcome (within a range) that is reach is just. Here, what is appraised is the justice of the basic structure. The structure shapes the needs, wants, and goods to be distributed, and so there is no question of an allotment of goods independent of it.

To explain this idea, Rawls introduces another contrast: the distinction between distributive and allocative justice.

Allocative justice has two features. First, “[A]llocative justice applies when a given collection of goods is to be divided among definite individuals with known desires and needs” (77). That is to say, in circumstances of allocative justice, we know certain information about the parties to whom goods are to be allocated: namely, their identities (they are “definite individuals” – i.e. unique persons who could each be picked out by some definite description). Second, set of goods to be divided up “is not the product of these individuals”- in other words, the people to whom the goods are to be allocated did not cooperate to produce those goods. As a result, Rawls thinks, the persons in question have “no prior claims on the things to be distributed” (77). This does not mean that they have no claims on the goods in question at all – the strength of their needs might alone be sufficient grounds for such a claim; rather, Rawls simply means that they do not have prior claims in virtue of (for example) cooperating to produce the goods.

The problem of distributive justice, for Rawls, is essentially different, and many political philosophers (Rawls thinks) have failed to grasp its distinctiveness. The idea is essentially connected to Rawls’ conception of society as a fair system of cooperation over time. Circumstances of distributive justice obtain when the persons engaged in the production of certain goods in accordance with publicly recognized rules are the very same persons to whom those goods are to be distributed.

Two aspects of this characterization are important: (1) that the distributed goods are socially produced by the parties to whom they are distributed and (2) that the society is governed by public rules. Regarding (1), the important point is that such individuals, in virtue of cooperating to produce the goods in question, have prior claims on those goods in a way that those in cases of allocative justice do not. Regarding (2), the public system of rules “determines what is produced, how much is produced, and by what means” (76), so what there is to be distributed is not independent of these rules. Moreover, citizens expectations and claims are determined by these very rules; they are not prior to them: “What a person does depends upon what the public rules say he will be entitled to, and what a person is entitled to depends on what he does” (74).

Utilitarianism, Rawls thinks, actually makes (more) sense when viewed as an answer to the allocative problem: “Since there are no prior claims on the things to be distributed, it is natural to share them out according to desires and needs, or even to maximize the net balance of satisfaction. Justice becomes a kind of efficiency, unless equality is preferred. Suitably generalized, the allocative conception leads to the classical utilitarian view” (77). But it is not an adequate response to the distributive problem.

Rawls concludes with a final comment on the second principle: its parts are lexically ordered: FEO is prior to DP. This means that in applying DP we assume both FEO and the liberty principle obtain.

15. Primary Social Goods as the Basis of Expectations

Rawls now turns to the question: how are the expectations of a social group to be estimated? A convincing answer is necessary in order to apply the DP.

One way to specify the concept of expectations would be utilitarian: to measure expectations in terms of utility. Utility, though, is difficult to measure, and creates a problem when making interpersonal comparisons. To compare utilities one needs: (a) a cardinal measure for each person, (b) someway of comparing this across persons. One objection to utilitarianism is that this is difficult to do. Rawls thinks this way of doing things is in any case mistaken: we need ‘to find some objective grounds for these comparisons.’ Rawls suggests that happiness is not the right sort of ground.

The DP, in contrast, establishes comparisons in two ways: (a) only ordinary judgments are required (because we only care about the position of the worst off), and (b) it treats expectations in terms of primary goods. That is, a person’s expectation is simply the index of primary goods that a representative individual can look forward to.

Primary goods are ‘things which it is supposed a rational man can want whatever else he wants’. That is, whatever an individuals’ rational plans or ends are, there are certain things it is rational to want more of because they can assure greater success is carrying out one’s plans.  These include: rights, liberties and opportunities, income and wealth, and ‘the social basis of self-respect (Rawls discusses this in §67). Because the two principles are serially ordered, indexing such goods is much easier: one assumes, in applying the DP, that the relevant rights, liberties and opportunities are secured.

Then, Rawls considers an objection: if what we care about (ultimately) is a person’s good – their fulfillment of their life plan, why focus on primary goods, which are only a means? Rawls answer has to do with his conception of a person: it is assumed that the members of society are rational and able to adjust their conceptions of the good to their situation. A further reason is that there is little public agreement on how to estimate happiness or satisfaction, while there is much on all-purpose means to achieve it. Thus, justice as fairness ‘does not look behind the use which persons make’ of primary goods or the satisfactions they achieve.

16. Relevant Social Positions

Having introduced the idea of primary goods as a way of defining citizens’ expectations, Rawls turns to a related difficulty: in order to apply the two principles, we need an account of the relevant representative social positions, which will work to define a ‘point of view’ from which social arrangements may be assessed. But, there are a multitude of possible positions—not only worker and farmer, but dairy farmer, corn farmer, and so forth. To solve the problem, ‘we need to identify certain positions as more basic’ for assessing claims of social justice. But how?

To answer, Rawls reminds us of the reasons for focusing on the basic structure: that structure favors some, and the inequalities it allows are deep and begin from birth. This, though, suggests an answer: the relevant social positions are individuals’ starting places generalized an aggregated.

Rawls identifies two such positions: (1) the representative citizen (the position of equality of basic liberties) and (2) the representative class position (the position of those with different expectations for primary goods). Matters of basic liberties are assessed from the first position; matters of economic distribution are also assessed from the second. In taking up the second position, Rawls at admits there is ‘a certain arbitrariness’ (84) involved in identifying the worst off group: just think of questions like what is the cut off for being ‘worst off’ as opposed to ‘next worst off’? Rawls suggests that we need to take into account practical considerations here. He also assumes that those who are worst off are least favored by three factors: (1) family/class origins, (2) natural endowments, (3) luck (83).

[Parenthetically, Rawls also makes an important simplifying assumption: that ‘everyone has physical needs and psychological capacities within the normal range’ (83). This assumption creates several problems for Rawls in matters of disability justice. But I will discuss this in a later post.]

Rawls is often criticized for treating the representative position as only a class position, and so neglecting race and gender. The criticism is important and has significant implications for the applicability of justice as fairness to actual societies. But Rawls seems aware of the difficulty. He writes:

As far as possible, then, justice as fairness appraises the social system from the position of equal citizenship and the various levels of income and wealth. Sometimes, however, other positions may need to be taken into account. If, for example, there are unequal basic rights founded on fixed natural characteristics, these inequalities will single out relevant positions. Since these characteristics cannot be changed, the positions they define count as starting places in the basic structure. Distinctions based on sex are of this type, and so are those depending upon race and culture. Thus if, say, men are favored in the assignment of basic rights, this inequality is justified by the difference principle (in the general interpretation) only if it is to the advantage of women and acceptable from their standpoint. And the analogous condition applies to the justification of caste systems, or racial and ethnic inequalities (§39). Such inequalities multiply relevant positions and complicate the application of the two principles. On the other hand, these inequalities are seldom, if ever, to the advantage of the less favored, and therefore in a just society the smaller number of relevant positions should ordinarily suffice (84-5).

There are three important ideas here. The first is the obvious one that racial and gender inequalities are ‘seldom, if ever’ (let’s just say never) to the benefit of the worst off, and thus are not are not justifiable. The second is that Rawls therefore assumes that a just society would not contain such inequalities, and his focus on an ideal, just society without them is his rationale for excluding racial and gender positions. He does not bracket these questions because he thinks them unimportant, but rather because of the limited nature of his project. Finally, Rawls suggests a way to apply the idea of a representative position to racial and gender positions, and indeed suggests that doing so might in many cases be necessary.

17. The Tendency to Equality

In this chapter, Rawls comments on the conception of justice expressed by the two principles, explains its egalitarianism, how it incorporates a conception of fraternity, and responds to objections about desert, bias and meritocracy.

First, Rawls argues that the difference principle can capture what is worth capturing about the ‘principle of redress’. The latter principle holds that ‘underserved inequalities call for redress’ (86). It is in some ways similar to certain luck egalitarian considerations. The different principle achieves some of the intent behind this principle: it arranges society so that natural and social contingencies work to the favor of the worst off. This involves treating natural talents as ‘a common assert’: those who have been favored by nature may gain from their fortune only if doing so improves the lot of the worst off. Rawls concludes that natural distribution is neither just or unjust; what is just or unjust is how institutions deal with that distribution.

Second. Rawls notes that the difference principle ‘express a conception of reciprocity,’ and responds to the claim that it unfairly biases the worst off (88). His argument in response is the following: the better off have already been benefited by good fortune, which they do not deserve, and thus if we maximize their expectations, we ‘favor more fortunate twice over’.

One might respond that the good fortune of the fortunate is deserved. Rawls disambiguates the idea. On one idea of ‘desert’ (entitlement), this is true: in a just society, the better off have complied with the public rules and have legitimate expectations that need to be met. But, in the sense of desert intended by the objection –a ‘prejusticial sense’, to borrow Scheffler’s term—the better off do not deserve their fortune. People do not deserve our initial starting place in society or our natural endowments. People have a right to their endowments, but that does not imply that the better off have ‘a right to a cooperative scheme that enables them to obtain even further benefits in ways that do not contribute to the advantages of others’ (89). Again, this is connected to the idea that the DP is a principle of reciprocity.

Third, and relatedly, Rawls notes the DP ‘provides an interpretation of the principle of fraternity’: namely, it gives content to the idea of ‘not wanting to have greater advantages unless this is to the benefit of others who are less well off’ (this issue is important in Cohen’s critique of Rawls: Cohen charges that, because Rawls’ own lax application of the DP excludes its application to people choices in the market, the DP does not meaningfully ground this conception of fraternity).

Thus, Rawls’ thought provides a conception of Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite means:

Liberty corresponds to the first principle, equality to the idea of equality in the first principle together with equality of fair opportunity, and fraternity to the difference principle (91).

Fourth, Rawls responds to the objection that his conception of justice leads to a meritocratic society. His response is that ‘the difference principle transforms the aims of societies in fundamental respects’.

Rawls concludes with some fairly odd remarks about ‘genetic endowments’ and how the social system affects natural endowments. The remarks are not intended as an endorsement of eugenics (many forms of eugenics would be ruled out be Rawls’ liberty principle). Nevertheless, I find this remarks troubling from a disability justice point of view. For example, Rawls claims ‘the parties want to insure for their descendents the best genetic endowment’ (92). These issues arise for Rawls under the auspices of intergenerational justice. I see the thoughts here as a serious blind spot in Rawls’ thinking, but I will not pursue the issue further.

This concludes my summary of Rawls’ initial discussion of the principles of justice for the basic structure. In next post, I will focus on Rawls’ discussion of principles for individuals in §18-19.