The Fairest Of Them All By John Rawls Analysis

The Fairest of Them All

John Rawls is considered one of the most important political philosophers of the 20th century. His most famous work is on his theory of justice, which was later made into the book Justice as Fairness edited by Erin Kelly. In his work, Rawls sets out to discover what set of principles would best govern a just society. Rawls looks at the idea of a social contract, a concept first developed by philosophers John Locke and Kean Jacques Rousseau. Rawls, however, sets out to revive the social contract to create a realistic utopia that embodies the fair principles of justice. This approach holds that the society is in some sense an agreement among all those within the society on what constitutes a just society. Rawls believes that the fairest society would agree on his two principles of justice. Through his work, Rawls illustrates how and why a fair society would come to agree on these fair principles of justice, and at exactly what restrictions and presuppositions.

Rawls begins his work by defining the role of the principles of justice “to specify the fair terms of social cooperation. These principles specify the basic rights and duties to be assigned by the main political and social institutions, and they regulate the division of benefits arising from social cooperation and allot the burdens necessary to sustain it.” (7) Through these fair principles of justice, Rawls aims to build a realistic utopia. The two principles of justice he spells out in his work are: “Each person has the same indefeasible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all; and

Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are t...

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... of ignorance, the parties would come to his two basic principles of justice as written above.

Another key component of Rawls two principles of justice is the second part of the second principle, which is known as the difference principle “as a principle of distributive justice in the narrow sense” (61). The difference principle is meant to give the most advantage to the least advantaged group in society by providing “fair and equal opportunity” (61).

Throughout his work, Rawl’s argues for a philosophical basis for a realistic utopia that would balance liberty and equality through a social contract where a well-ordered democratic society, made up of free and equal citizens, would agree together on what constitutes a fair society. By entering in Original Position and under the veil of ignorance, the parties would come to his two basic principles of justice.