Rawls

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Mon Jan 31 12:14:41 PST 2000


You ask, if things are unjust, according to Rawls, how do we arrange them so that they are just? Rawls does not give much if an attempt to answer this. He says he has a theory of justice for a well-ordered society, one as near to ideal as you can imagine that still needs justice. This provides, he thinks, a standard to judge our own society by. He acknowledges that our society is very far from well ordered.

Now I think Rawls' lack of a transition theory is a BIG problem for Rawls. I have written about this, basically the line is that if his theory can't motivate us as we are, and he hasn't got a story about how we could get to where it could mptivate us, then it can't provide a standard for critiquing our societya s it is.

In Political Liberalism, Rawls briefly discusses the abolitionists and Dr. King in the context of expalining the notion of a transition, which shows that his heart in in the right place, but I don't think the move can work for him, because he can't appeal to agreement among all rational people, which is one of his criteria for a good theory of justice. Not mine, though.

--jks

<bofftagstumper at yahoo.com> writes:


> jks quotes Ken Hanly on Rawls:
>
> >> Rawls claims that the natural distribution is
> >> neither just or unjust it just is a fact.
> >> This completely denies any historical aspect of
> >> justice.
>
> and then replies:
>
> > You misunderstand Rawls. He thinks that means that
> > the "natural distribution" of whatever (talent,
> > wealth, etc.) has no moral claim to be respected
> > whatsoever. If things "happen" to be unjust, we have
>
> > to rearrange things so that they are just.
>
> But this raises a question for me: if things "happen"
> to be unjust, how can we "rearrange" them, outside of
> an historical context, so that they are just? Does
> Rawls admit a role for history in the conception of
> justice or not?
>
> Just wondering,
> --
> Curtiss
>
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