Philosophy Talk

Posted by John Perry


One of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century, John  Rawls articulated a vision of a liberal state, focused on justice.  His significant book was his Theory of Justice.  Continuing the ideas of Locke and others, Rawls maintains the best way to think of the state is as the result of a social contract.  Think of the beginning of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, …. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

The connection to Rawls is that last idea, that Governments are instituted among men for a purpose, and so their powers are limited by the original agreement or social contract.  Like most modern theorists in this tradition, like Rawls, don’t bring in God as the source of the rights.  They say the control a state has over its citizens, and the control citizens have over themselves, comes out of this social contract.

However Locke thought of it, modern theorists certainly don’t think of the social contract as an actual event; it is rather a framework for thinking about what’s fair and just:  what would people agree to, if they were forming a state.  Like a lot of philosophical idea, it needs counterfactuals for its proper expression.

Rawls vision of the social contract has a special twist.  He thinks the deciders, the ones agreeing to the contract, should be behind a veil of ignorance.  That’s where some listeners might be surprised.  Usually if people are negotiating an important contract, you don’t want them to be ignorant.  What was he getting at?

The veil of ignorance is  a very clever idea Rawls had, to insure that the contract will be fair.  The participants should be disinterested.  That’s disinterested, not uninterested.  Disinterested meaning having no stake in the outcome --- like a judge.  But if the negotiators are ultimately governed by the state they’re creating, they have a stake in the outcome.  How could they possibly be disinterested?  The negotiators have to decide what rewards and duties the occupants of each role will have.  But they don’t get to know which role they are going to occupy.  So the negotiators will try to figure out a system so that, whatever role they individually end up playing, they can be sure of being treated fairly ---- the candlestick maker will know that his candlestick maker salary and candlestick maker duties are something that he has agreed to as fair, before he knew he was going to make candles.

One’s first inclination might be to go for equality.  It seems the safest thing would be to say that everything should be equal; everyone should be treated the same.  Same salary, same hours, same voting privileges, absolute equality.  Rawls doesn’t quite see it that way, however.  The principle of equality is the first principle of justice.  And with respect to political rights --- voting, property rights, and so forth, there are no exceptions.  But there is also a second principle he calls ``the difference principle”.  According to this, certain jobs get higher salaries and other benefits, so long as this works to the advantage of everyone.

Suppose that being a butcher or a baker is something anyone can do, but making candles is really tricky and also a lot of hard work, and it requires a long apprenticeship to learn the properties of waxes and wicks.  We want the best and the brightest citizens to be drawn into the difficult but crucial profession of candle making.  The negotiators, behind the veil of ignorance, don’t know if they will be candle makers or not.  They don’t even know if they have the special talents necessary for candle making.  Still, because candle making is so essential and so difficult, they will agree that the candle makers should be more richly rewarded than butchers or bakers.

So basically Rawls thinks the structure of the state will conform to the equality principle, with everyone having the same political rights, but some differences are allowed for special goods and services, if justified by the difference principle. 

To tell us about some of the subtleties, and to tell us about the major objections to Rawls, we’ve got one of the major political philosophers of the 21st century, Stanford’s own Josh Cohen, a man who studied with John Rawls.