A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF JOHN RAWLS’ SECOND PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF JOHN RAWLS’ SECOND PRINCIPLE OF JUSTICE

BACKGROUND OF STUDY

In the history of philosophy, the issue of justice has always been a serious debate. The debate is all about what the concept ‘justice’ means and how it can be attained in a society. Thrasymachus, an ancient Greek philosopher, equated justice with ‘‘might is right’’. According to Christopher Stolleri, ‘’Justice is a concept that is balanced between law and morality’’1. Morality has to do with the rightness or wrongness of an action. Laws are laid down principles that guide a society and they can be used for the good or bad of a nation’s citizens. For Joseph Omoregbe, ‘’the foundation of Justice is the fundamental equality of all men’’2. Justice is applied in a society so that there will be peace and harmony in the society. A society is an aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.

From this, various philosophers gave their various theories of how justice can be attained in the society.

Socrates, a Greek philosopher, felt that justice can be attained in a society when wisdom is employed. For Plato, it is when philosophers are kings in the society. According to Karl Marx, a just society is a classless society which he referred to as communism. John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham are of the view that we arrive at a just society when the society acts to provide ‘’the greatest good for the greatest number’.

John Rawls provided his own theory of justice by criticizing the utilitarian view of justice because it can be abused, leading to the ‘’tyranny of the majority’’ (Nazi Germany’s mistreatment of the Jews and the United States mistreatment of African Americans)3. Rawls’ approach guards against this common source of injustice.

Principles of justice are the principles that rational and free persons that are concerned to further their interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining fundamentals of the term of their association.4 In his book, ‘A Theory of Justice’, like Plato, Rawls imagines a political society structured on principles of justice, a just society where nobody complains of injustice, a society governed by principles of justice.

From the above, John Rawls came up with his own idea of a just society by providing two principles that can guide a society to attain the state of a just society. He did this by giving a theory of the people in the original position wearing a veil of ignorance that they would not be partial. One of John Rawls’ primary aim was to set forth the appropriate moral conception that was better suited to interpreting the democratic values of freedom and equality than the reigning utilitarian tradition.

It is in the light of this background that this research intends to critically analyze the principles that John Rawls gave to guide us to a just society. In order to achieve this, this study shall consider the following: the people of the original position, the veil of ignorance and the principles accepted, mainly focusing on his second principle of justice.

 

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The second principle states that: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of all the least advantaged, consistent with the just saving principle, (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Various problems arise, for instance, can there ever really be equal opportunities given the fact that nature itself is not equal? Is it fair for things to be shared equally when people do not give the same quota to the society? How do the individuals gain possession of goods?

Although John Rawls’ principle of justice is an improvement from some other solutions to the problem of justice, the question is, can we say that John Rawls’ second principle of justice is adequate in guiding a society to a state where it can be regarded as a just society? Can it be universally accepted? These questions are the core areas of this study.

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