Led by John Rawls
About this course
The sixth module takes up the most important work of twentieth-century political philosophy, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, and the question of what makes a society just.
It answers the tension that closed the Mill module. Mill grounded liberty on utility, yet utility — being aggregative — could always trade away the liberty of some for the greater good of others. Rawls sets out to ground justice without that aggregation. His guiding idea is simple: principles are fair if they would be chosen in a situation that is itself fair. So he revives the social contract at a new level of abstraction. Imagine choosing the basic rules of society from an "original position" behind a "veil of ignorance" — not knowing your class, talents, sex, or even your idea of the good life. Unable to rig the rules in your own favour, you would choose principles acceptable whatever position you turned out to occupy: secure equal basic liberties first, and economic inequalities only where they improve the lot of the worst-off. Against the utilitarians, Rawls argues that this refusal to sacrifice the few for the many expresses the deepest truth they miss — that persons are separate and inviolable, never mere channels into one great sum of satisfaction.
The student leaves able to build and assess the original position, and holding Rawls's revival of the Kantian conception of persons against the utilitarianism of the earlier modules. They read Rawls's A Theory of Justice directly.
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Led by John Rawls
The question
What are the principles of a just society, and how could we justify them to people who disagree deeply about how to live? Rawls's answer is that just principles are those that would be agreed in a fair situation of choice — the original position, behind a veil of ignorance that hides from each chooser their class, talents, and conception of the good. Unable to tailor the rules to their own advantage, rational choosers would secure equal basic liberties for all and permit inequalities only where these improve the position of the least advantaged. The module builds this device step by step and shows how it grounds justice without the aggregation that, in utilitarianism, allows the few to be sacrificed for the many — because each person possesses an inviolability that the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.