Rawls in 60 Minutes

By Walther Ziegler

John Rawls's masterpiece A Theory of Justice was discussed all over the world already during the author's lifetime. Its very title is provocative since it is generally believed that there can be no general theory of justice: what is just for one man is unjust for another. But Rawls succeeds nonetheless in giving a definition of a just society. To do this he develops a brilliant procedure: choice from behind a "veil of ignorance". If we are to choose, absolutely fairly and objectively, how property, income and education are to be justly distributed, then the people choosing must not know in advance whether, in the society they choose, they will be rich or poor, male or female, worker or employer, educated or uneducated, talented or untalented. Because a rich man is likely to find great differences in wealth just, a poor man unjust. Only a "veil of ignorance", says Rawls, "forces each to take the welfare of others into account". Such a choice "behind a veil" could, of course, never actually take place. But if it did, says Rawls, then it would produce the only two perfectly just principles of justice that can be applied to a society: the equality principle and the "difference principle". By these the quality of every modern society can be measured. What do these principles mean in detail? And can the same thought-experiment work in other contexts? If, for example, we did not know whether, in a future society, we would be humans or animals, would we then choose a vegetarian society? Rawls surely sets off, with his Theory of Justice, a whole firework display of ground-breaking new ideas. This introduction to Rawls appears as part of the popular series "Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes".

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Mar 2, 2020
• ISBN: 9783750440166

Walther Ziegler

Walther Ziegler est professeur d'université et docteur en philosophie. En tant que correspondant à l'étranger, reporter et directeur de l'information de la chaîne de télévision allemande ProSieben, il a produit des films sur tous les continents. Ses reportages ont été récompensés par plusieurs prix. En 2007, il a prit la direction de la « Medienakademie » à Munich, une Université des Sciences Appliquées et y forme depuis des cinéastes et des journalistes. Il est l'auteur de nombreux ouvrages philosophiques, qui ont été publiés en plusieurs langues dans le monde entier. En sa qualité de journaliste de longue date, il parvient à résumer la pensée complexe des grands philosophes de manière passionnante et accessible à tous.

Book preview

My thanks go to Rudolf Aichner for his tireless critical editing; Silke Ruthenberg for the fine

graphics; Lydia Pointvogl, Eva Amberger, Christiane Hüttner, and Dr. Martin Engler for their

excellent work as manuscript readers and sub-editors; Prof. Guntram Knapp, who first

inspired me with enthusiasm for philosophy; and Angela Schumitz, who handled in the most

professional manner, as chief editorial reader, the production of both the German and the

English editions of this series of books.

My special thanks go to my translator

Dr Alexander Reynolds.

Himself a philosopher, he not only translated the original German text into English with great

care and precision but also, in passages where this was required in order to ensure clear

understanding, supplemented this text with certain formulations adapted specifically to the

needs of English-language readers.

Inhalt

Rawls’s Great Discovery

Rawls’s Central Idea

Why We Pose the Question of Justice: The Three Basic Facts of the Human Condition

The Original Position – Zero Hour for the Choice of an Ideal Society

The Veil of Ignorance and the Maximin Rule

The Two Principles of Justice: The Principle of Equality and the Difference Principle

Robinson Crusoe, His Man Friday, Scrooge McDuck and John Rawls Stranded on a Desert Island

Of What Use Is Rawls’s Discovery For Us Today?

Improving the Lot of the Least Advantaged – Rawls’s Critique of Capitalism

Fair Distribution of Goods and Resources: Realizable in Practice or Pure Theory?

The Veil of Ignorance: A Principle of Decision That Can Also Be Applied in Other Fields?

Rawls’s Legacy: The Undying Demand for Justice

Bibliographical References

Rawls’s Great Discovery

The Harvard professor John Rawls (1921-2002) may well be the most significant of all recent American thinkers. He published his main philosophical work, A Theory of Justice, at the age of fifty. Already the book’s title has stayed, from its first appearance in 1971 right up to the present day, a provocation for many. This inasmuch as, in the view of most people, justice cannot be the object of a theory at all but is rather always a matter of one’s personal point of view. Each of us, so it is widely thought, considers, from his or her own perspective, very different things to be just or unjust. And now here comes an American philosophy professor and claims that he has found a definition of justice that is valid for everyone at every time.

Possibly despite, or possibly because of this provocative quality the book quickly came to enjoy enormous success and before the end of the century was known and read all over the world. Today, fifty years later, it belongs among the philosophical classics and counts as one of the most important works of political ethics. There can be no doubt, then, but that A Theory of Justice is a groundbreaking work which does not just fascinate politicians and political scientists but has already, in many countries, gained a well-earned place in the education of young people still of school age.

In this important work Rawls poses the great question of the just society: according to what principles must a modern democracy be organized? Much depends on the answer to this question – including our judgment of the conditions in which we currently live. Because the fact is that we must never be content with anything less than what Rawls calls a perfectly just society:

Already in the very first pages of this his main philosophical work Rawls formulates the ambitious aim of his project and its vast dimensions:

But what is this perfectly just society to look like? The question what is the best possible form of human co-existence? is one with a long tradition in philosophy. Already in Ancient Greece Plato had sketched out, in his Republic, the model of an ideal state that would be governed, absolutely justly, by philosopher-kings thoroughly trained in all the branches of knowledge. Later, during the Renaissance, Thomas More continued this tradition, describing in his novel Utopia a thoroughly harmonious society of people living happily together on an island without private property of any kind. This term utopia – which More, an enthusiastic scholar of the classical languages, assembled from the Ancient Greek words for no and place to evoke a place existing nowhere – has since become a term for a whole genre of literature and type of political aspiration: visions of an ideal future. And finally, on the eve of the French Revolution, Rousseau, in his Social Contract, painted the portrait of a society of absolutely free citizens who governed themselves through popular assemblies.

Rawls, then, was by no means the first to pose this question as to the nature of an ideal, perfectly just society. In the end, however, he provides significantly more than do all his predecessors. In his theory of justice he not only sketches out a utopia – that is to say, a notion of the ideal society as we would wish to see it – but offers, above and beyond this, a procedure which any of us can use to test whether the distribution of goods and opportunities within