Compare And Contrast A Theory Of Justice By John Rawls

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls argues that justice as fairness is a better theory of justice than John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism. Rawls argues that in the hypothetical case of the original position a rational individual would choose to abide by his two principles of justice as fairness. Mill presents his theory of justice in Utilitarianism. Mill argues for justice as sentiment. I will summarize both Mill’s and Rawls’ argument for our sense of justice. Then, I will explain how Rawls objects to Mill’s sense of justice on the grounds that utilitarianism does not make a serious distinction between persons. Rawls presents slavery, and extreme economic inequality, as counter examples against Mill. I will argue that Rawls’ objection is mistaken,

1072). Utilitarianism posits that actions are right because, and to the extent that; they result in good (Mill, 1871 Pg. 1072). Therefore, the right action for a utilitarian is the one that does the most good, where the most good is happiness. A utilitarian holds happiness as the highest intrinsic value, and happiness is intended to mean pleasure (Mill, 1871 Pg. 1072). An action is wrong because it promotes pain, the opposite of happiness or pleasure (Mill 1871, Pg. 1072) . Therefore, utility, or The Greatest Happiness Principle, is pleasure itself or the absence of pain (Mill 1871, Pg. 1074). For example, say I have a choice between three cases, where case one has 10 utiles of happiness and 7 utiles of pain, and case two has 6 utiles of happiness and 1 utile of pain. The best case, and the one a utilitarian would choose, is case two. This is because it has the greatest amount of overall happiness, 5, whereas case one only has 3. Thus, utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory that considers the rightness or wrongness of an action only with respect to the amount of happiness that it produces (Mill, 1871 Pg.

The Utilitarian could respond to the case of slavery by positing, if slaves were the minority, then the contract theory can help them, so we must assume that they are the minority in this case. Yet, would a minority group of salves increase the overall happiness of a society? The utilitarian would argue that it would not increase the overall happiness of the greatest amount of people. Furthermore what kind of happiness does this group give to society that a larger group of paid workers could not give? This is not a plausible case under utilitarianism, but neither is having a majority of people be slaves. The Utilitarian argues that any foreseen act that could be harmful to one’s self, could be harmful to society, so they would not condone slavery for the majority of people