Book Review by CueBall - A Theory Of Justice

Richard Woulfe has asked me to write a review of the book “A Theory of Justice”, written by John Rawls in 1971, which I had noted as one of my favorite books on my blogger profile. I first came upon it some 30 years ago in a graduate seminar on educational theory at UW-Madison. It has affected my thinking about how society can be organized.

I do not presume to have the intellectual capacity to write a serious review. For one thing, I’m not sure I understand the book well enough, though I’ve tried to. I think I understand some of its basic concepts, though, and I’ll try to flesh out that understanding with what I’ve read ABOUT Rawls’ thought in secondary sources. In some cases I have used others’ language without attribution, because I think it makes the points clearly. Any errors in exposition or understanding are mine, of course.

Another source for understanding Rawls is his later book, “Justice as Fairness”, published in 2001. I only recently discovered this book. A reviewer writes of that book: “Rawls is a rigorous, systematic thinker who demands a focused and patient reader with a copious memory. Nevertheless, this restatement of path-breaking earlier work sets a model for generous consideration and cogent response to the best objections raised over three decades by the most competent critics any author could desire. If you only have time to read one book by the foremost political philosopher of our time, read this one several times.”[emphasis added.]

To start with, Rawls assumes that free, rational, moral people in an initial position of equality will act in their own self-interest as they cooperate to design the society they and future generations will live in. They will “…develop principles which are to assign basic rights and duties and to determine the division of social benefits.” Further, Rawls assume that these people operate behind a “veil of ignorance”; that is, they do not know their own actual place in the society to be designed; they don’t know their race, their class, their gender, their natural abilities in intelligence, strength, creativity, etc. This is not the way the real world is, or ever was, of course. It’s important to realize that Rawls is setting up a hypothetical model, and projecting from his assumptions, speculating on the result to form his theory.

Rawls concludes that, if people don’t know where they’re going to wind up in the society, they will design it so that, even if they wind up the worst possible social position imaginable, they will be treated as fairly as humanly possible. This is not to say that, once the veil of ignorance is removed, all people will be equal. There will be those differences I indicated in the paragraph above, and over time those differences will manifest themselves in emerging inequalities. Given those differences and inequalities, how will the people on top treat those on the bottom, and visa versa?

Rawls writes, “Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.” He presents a political conception of justice, and carefully distinguishes it from more comprehensive doctrines, whether philosophical, moral or religious. I think his bottom line is this: a society is Just if it provides the most extensive set of liberties possible to everyone in the society and if it contains ways to balance social inequalities and provide equal access to desirable social positions.

The thoughts of John Rawls and the influential Christian theologian Reinhold Niebhur are often studied together -- in university courses ranging from Religion to Public Administration, Business Ethics to Political Science, from Philosophy to Education. I’d like to think that they would agree on the conception of justice Rawls presented, though Niebhur died just about the same time that “A Theory of Justice” was published. They both favorably quoted from Abraham Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address, which discussed both the evil of slavery and the ability of two sets of Americans to each take the Christian Bible as their justification for slaughtering each other during our Civil War. To claim certain knowledge of the divine will and purpose was for Lincoln the unpardonable sin. Both Rawls and Niebhur realized the natural disparities among humans and considered carefully how such imperfect beings can arrange society to be fair in the largest possible sense.

I believe Rawls can be read profitably (however difficult it may be, and it certainly is for me) by anyone who recognizes that we live in an imperfect world, by anyone who is concerned with treating fellow human beings as he/she would like to be treated, and by anyone who makes decisions about how government, at all levels, affects the lives of citizens. I think that includes anyone who has reached the age of reason. I recommend reading Rawls, in some form, to everyone.

Fred Juergens