John Rawls was one of the leading American philosophers specializing in moral and political philosophy. He was the author of Theory of Justice, which is still considered one of the most important publications in political philosophy. He was awarded the Shock Prize in Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanitarian Medal. In addition to his career in philosophy, Rawls also served in the U.S. Army during World War II, the Pacific, New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan. After leaving the army, he continued his education and received his doctorate at Princeton University. He later taught at Harvard University.
Childhood and youth
John Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His parents: William Lee - lawyer, Anna Abell Stump. He suffered a severe emotional shock early when his two brothers died in childhood due to illness.
He attended school in Baltimore, after which he enrolled at the Kent School in Connecticut. In 1939 he entered Princeton University.
In 1943, shortly after receiving a degree in art, he joined the United States Army. He served during World War II, but left military service, witnessing the bombing of Hiroshima.
Having refused military service, he again entered Princeton University in 1946 to obtain a doctorate in moral philosophy. At Princeton, he came under the influence of Wittgenstein's student Norman Malcolm.
In 1950, John Rawls published a dissertation entitled "Research in the Field of Ethical Knowledge: considered with reference to judgments on the moral value of character."
After receiving his doctorate in 1950, he began teaching at Princeton University, remaining in this position for two years.
Change of mind
As a college student, Rawls wrote an extremely religious dissertation and was considering studying for priesthood. Still, Rawls lost his Christian faith in World War II, seeing death in battle and learning about the horrors of the Holocaust. Then, in the 1960s, Rawls opposed America’s military action in Vietnam. The Vietnam conflict prompted Rawls to analyze the flaws in the American political system that led him to so mercilessly pursue what he considered an unjust war and to think about how citizens could resist the aggressive policies of their government.
Career
In 1951, in his journal Philosophical Review, Cornell University published his Ethics Decision Making Scheme. In the same journal, he also wrote Justice as Honesty and A Sense of Justice.
In 1952, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship at Oxford University. Here he worked with H.L. A. Hart, Isaiah Berlin and Stuart Hampshire. He returned to the United States of America, where he later became an assistant professor at Cornell University. By 1962, he became a professor at the same university and soon received a full-time position at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. However, he decided to teach at Harvard, to which he devoted more than 30 years.
In 1963, he wrote a chapter entitled “Constitutional Freedom and the Concept of Justice” for the book Nomos VI: Justice, an annual of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy.
In 1967, he wrote a chapter entitled Distributive Justice, which was published in the book of Philosophy, W.J. Ransiman, Philosophy, Politics, and Society. The following year, he wrote an article on “Distributive justice: some additions.”
In 1971, he wrote Theory of Justice, which was published by Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. She is considered one of his most important works on political philosophy and ethics.
In November 1974, he wrote an article entitled “Response to Alexander and Musgrave” in the “Quarterly Economic Journal”. In the same year, The American Economic Survey published Some Causes for the Maximin Criterion.
In 1993, he released an updated version of Theory of Justice called Political Liberalism. The work was published by Columbia University Press. In the same year, John Rawls wrote an article entitled The Law of the Peoples, which was published in The Critical Investigation.
In 2001, the book Justice as Honesty: Reaffirmation was published in response to criticism of his book Theory of Justice. The book was a summary of his philosophy, edited by Erin Kelly.
Personal life
In 1949, he married Brown University graduate Margaret Fox. John Rawls himself did not like giving interviews and did not feel comfortable being in the spotlight. According to his convictions, he was an atheist. In 1995, he suffered a series of strokes, after which he could no longer work.
He died at the age of 81 in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Scientific works
Rawls' most debated work is his theory of a just society. Rawls first outlined the idea of ​​justice in detail in his 1971 book, Theory of Justice. He continued to correct this idea throughout his life. This theory also appeared in other books: John Rawls considers it in Political Liberalism (1993), The Law of the Peoples (1999), and Justice as Honesty (2001).
Four roles of political philosophy
Rawls believes that political philosophy performs at least four roles in the public life of society. The first role is practical: political philosophy can find grounds for informed consent in a society where sharp disagreements can lead to conflict. Rawls cites Leviathan Hobbes as an attempt to solve the problem of order during the civil war in England, and the “Documents of the Federalists” emerge from the debate over the US Constitution.
The second role of political philosophy is to help citizens navigate their own social world. Philosophy may reflect on what it means to be a member of a particular society, and how you can understand the nature and history of this society in a broader perspective.
A third role is to explore the boundaries of a feasible political opportunity. Political philosophy should describe working political mechanisms that can get support from real people. However, within these limits, philosophy can be utopian: it can portray the social order, which is the best we can hope for. Given that people are what they are, as Rousseau said, philosophy represents what laws can be.
The fourth role of political philosophy is reconciliation: “in order to calm our frustration and rage against our society and its history, showing us how its institutions ... are rational and develop over time, as they have reached their present, rational form.” Philosophy can show that human life is not just domination and cruelty, prejudice, stupidity and corruption.
John Rawls saw his own work as a practical contribution to overcoming the long-standing tension in democratic thought between freedom and equality and to restricting civil and international norms of tolerance. He invites members of his society to perceive themselves as free and equal citizens in the framework of a fair democratic policy and describes the encouraging vision of a consistently fair constitutional democracy that contributes to a peaceful international community. To individuals who are disappointed that their fellow citizens do not see the whole truth in the form in which they see it, Rawls offers the conciliatory thought that this diversity of worldviews can maintain a social order, in fact providing greater freedom for everyone.
John Rawls ideas of justice theory
Briefly considering its concept, it should be noted that social cooperation in one form or another is necessary so that citizens can lead a decent life. However, citizens are not indifferent to how the benefits and burden of cooperation will be shared between them. The principles of justice by John Rawls formulate central liberal ideas that cooperation should be fair to all citizens considered free and equal. The distinctive interpretation that he gives these concepts can be seen as a combination of a negative and a positive thesis.
A negative thesis begins with a different idea. John Rawls argues that citizens do not deserve to be born into a rich or poor family, be born naturally more or less gifted than others, be born a woman or a man, be born in a particular racial group, and so on. Since, in this sense, these personality traits are morally arbitrary, citizens are not entitled to more benefits of social cooperation simply because of them. For example, the fact that a citizen was born rich, white, and male does not in itself give grounds for this citizen to be approved by social institutions.
This negative thesis does not indicate how social products should be distributed. Rawls's positive distributive thesis speaks of reciprocity on the basis of equality. All social goods should be distributed equally if unequal distribution is not beneficial for everyone. The main idea of ​​John Rawls is that since citizens are basically equal, reasoning about justice should start with the assumption that goods produced in a cooperative should be equally divided.
Then justice requires that any inequality benefit all citizens and, in particular, benefit those who have the least. Equality establishes a baseline; hence, any inequality should improve the situation of everyone, and especially the situation of the most disadvantaged. These stringent requirements of equality and mutual advantage are hallmarks that convey a summary of the theory of justice.
John Rawls: Two Fundamental Theories
The guiding ideas of justice take on an institutional form through the two principles of justice.
According to the first of them, each person has the same inalienable requirement for a fully adequate scheme of equal basic freedoms, which is compatible with the same scheme of freedom for all.
The second principle states that socio-economic inequality must satisfy two conditions:
- They should be assigned to offices and positions open to all, in conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
- They should be most beneficial to the least affluent members of society (principle of distinction).
The first principle of equal fundamental freedoms should be embodied in a political constitution, while the second principle applies primarily to economic institutions. The implementation of the first principle takes precedence over the implementation of the second principle, and within the framework of the second principle, fair equality of opportunity takes precedence over the principle of difference.
The first principle of John Rawls states that all citizens should have fundamental rights and freedoms: freedom of conscience and association, speech and personality, the right to vote, hold public office, be considered in accordance with the rule of law, etc. He provides all this to all citizens equally. Unequal rights will not bring benefits to those who receive a smaller share, so justice requires equal conditions for everyone under any normal circumstances.
The second principle of justice of John Rawls consists of two parts. The first part, fair equality of opportunity, requires that citizens with the same talents and the desire to use them have the same educational and economic opportunities, regardless of whether they were born rich or poor.
The second part is the principle of difference, which governs the distribution of wealth and income. The resolution of inequalities in wealth and income can lead to an increase in the social product: for example, higher wages can cover the cost of training and education and can stimulate the creation of jobs that are more in demand. The principle of differences allows inequality in wealth and income, if only it will be beneficial to all, and especially to those who are in a worse situation. The principle of difference requires that any economic inequality be most beneficial to those in the least position.
Sequence of theories
For Rawls, political philosophy is not just an application of moral philosophy. Unlike utilitarians, he does not have a universal principle: “The right regulatory principle for anything,” he says, “depends on its own nature.” John Rawls' theory is limited to politics, and in this area he believes that the right principles depend on its specific agents and limitations.