Ariadne's Thread on Justice
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Justice and Basic Structure

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Ayesha Speaking

OK. We mentioned in our first session that the word 'justice' can be applied to many different sorts of things: Here's the list we used:


 

 
  • Just societies
  • Just laws
  • Just institutions
  • Just acts
  • Just decisions
  • Just distributions of things
  • Just punishment
  • Just men and women

 

Rawls isn't concerned with all these possibilities. He is concerned with what he calls the "basic structure of society." (Theory, section #2)

He tries to be a little more specific when he says that he is concerned with "the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation." (Theory, section #2)

In one way his concern is very traditional. He sees justice as having to do with how benefits and burdens are distributed. This fits in with the ancient notion of justice as "giving each his or her due." (Notice that I updated that to explicitly include women.) We said before that this phrase is empty unless we have some substantive principles to give it content. Rawls wants to supply those substantive principles.

Thomas Pogge, a former student of Rawls, has written extensively about Rawls. He says that Rawls wants to produce a "public criterion of justice" that can be used to evaluate alternative basic structures for society.


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