Rawls Readings in Revised Edition of Theory of Justice

xi - xvi, 3 - 40, 52 - 58, 67 bottom - 70, 73 - 81, 86 - 93

102 - 105, 109 - 112, 118 - 123, 130 - 139, 153 - 160, 176 - 180, 194 - 200

NOTES

• Primary goods now determined by what persons need in their status as free and equal citizens cooperating with each other over a complete life. This supposed to get beyond the previous view that suggested that the primary goods are determined by human nature. (P. xiii)
• Fair value of equal liberty -e.g., the right to vote, won't be worth much if the outcome of elections is determined by money. Hence Rawls assumes that the principles of justice will be implemented so that these liberties have their "fair value." This requires, e.g., public financing of campaigns (p. 198).
• Property-owning democracy (widely distributed ownership of the means of production) or liberal socialist regime is required for justice as fairness (p. xv.)
• Some basic liberties: equal liberty of conscience (180), and freedom of thought, equal political participation (varies in the degree to which the constitution is majoritarian), including right to vote, hold office, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of the person (including freedom from psychological oppression and physical assault), right to hold property, freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure (list is on p. 53.)
• Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness: person acting autonomously when the principles of his action express his nature as a free, equal, and rational being, as opposed to expressing his social position or natural endowments. This nature as free, equal and rational is captured in the original position, where the parties don't know enough for "contingencies" like social class or natural endowments to effect the principles decided. Since the parties are mutually disinterested, they decide for themselves, that is, autonomously. This Kantian interpretation is crucial for Rawls, since it seems to be his only answer to the question of why I should be bound by principles that I did not approve, and would not approve, given what I know about myself. His answer: because these principles express your nature (pp. 222-3).
• Aristotelian Principle: Other things being equal, human beings enjoy the exercise of their realized capacities (innate or trained abilities), and their enjoyment increases the more the capacity is realized, or the greater its complexity (p. 374).
• The most important primary good: self-respect, person's sense of his own value, and the value of his conception of the good, and his plan of life (p. 386). Having self-respect requires some affirmation from other people, and some satisfaction of the Aristotelian principle. Sense of self-worth can be reinforce by groups you are in, even if you aren't all that excellent in your performances. Shame is a blow to ones self-respect, connected with the expected reactions to ones shortcomings or failures from others in your group. Guilt is private, shame is public.
• Grounds for the priority of liberty: Parties highest-order interest is how their other interests are shaped and regulated by social institutions. Parties are free persons, who can choose and revise the good and live plans, and who give priority to being able to do this. This implies priority for liberty. The basis for self-respect in a just society is not one's income share but the publically affirmed distribution of fundamental rights and liberties, which is an equal distribution (p. 477). Rawls arguments for this claim are mainly concerned with its desirability, not its feasibility. This is to be achieved partly by having people compare there economic situation only to those in a similar position. It is also important that economic inequalities not be too great.

Notes on the Priority of Liberty

Titbits from Rawls' Political Liberalism:

• The two moral powers that citizens are assumed to have are (1) the capacity for a sense of justice, and (2) the capacity for a conception of the good. (P. 19)
• "Since citizens are regarded as having two moral powers, we ascribe to them two corresponding higher-order interests in developing and exercising these powers. .... they still have a third higher-order interest to guide them, for they must try to adopt principles of justice that enable the persons represented to protect and advance some determinate (but unspecified) conceptions of the good over complete life..." (P. 74)

From Theory of Justice:

• "...the parties regard themselves as having a highest order interest in how all their other interests, including even their fundamental ones are shaped and regulated by social institutions." (P. 131)

From the Dewey Lectures:

• Advancing one's conception of the good is higher-order, but not highest-order interest. Their highest interest is in being able to choose and revise there conception of the good, not in achieving it.

The argument of §82:

• People in the original position first secure their highest order interest, and thus they give precedence to liberty. (P. 476) Doppelt's question is how you get from liberty to the specific list of basic liberties.
• "In a well-ordered society then self-respect is secured by the public affirmation of the status of equal citizenship for all.... Not everyone can have the highest status [based on wealth and income].... The best solution is to support the primary good of self-respect as far as possible by the assignment of basic liberties that can indeed be made equal." (P. 478). Doppelt argues that this "best solution" cannot in fact be achieved under capitalism.
• This is (one version of) a critique from the left. The critique from the right is that Rawls system does not fully realize what might be called "entrepreneurial" liberties, by restricting some capitalist acts among consenting adults. (Robert Nozick)

On Doppelt: Power is zero-sum, so the difference principle implies equal power, as Locke says is the situation in the state of nature. One possible answer is to group wealth and power together, so that they can trade against each other. Then claim that everyone has more wealth+power if that quantity is unequally distributed. Doppelt's independent argument is that unequal power wounds the self-respect of the powerless, and capitalist work-relations make workers powerless, and acutely aware of that fact.

Doppelt on Rawls:

• D. concedes that capitalism in the developed countries does provide certain liberties, e.g., freedom of speech or religion, right to vote, etc. These are bourgeois-democratic liberties. What is missing here, on Doppelt's view, are liberties that would allow workers control over their work. This is a liberty issue because it concerns whether workers will be prevented from deciding about what work is done and how its is done, where the alternative is that management makes all the decisions and workers are compelled to comply, on plain of unemployment. Marx's term for this is that labor in capitalist society is "wage slavery."
• D. concedes the Kantian conception of the person, which he sees as involving essentially the capacity for freedom and for morality (p. 286). Is the Kantian conception too narrow? Where do enjoyment, creativity, sympathy, the Aristotelian principle come in, given that these are often thought to be fundamental aspects of human nature? No one doubts that freedom or self-determination is important, but what makes it the main thing? Is the conception of human nature/the person too narrow?
• Hart says that R. has no definition of basic liberties. R. tried to remedy this in the new edition of T of J by giving a list (p. 53). Not clear whether this is good enough to answer H., but it certainly doesn't answer other challenges from Right or Left. R. says that there is no natural right to property in the means of production (p. xvi). Why not? (objection from the Right). Apparently there is no natural right to power over ones labor, either (objection from the Left). Giving a list of liberties says what you take the liberties to be, but it doesn't say why they are the right ones, and why others are not on the list.
• Without a criterion of basic liberty, it is hard can't argue that our supposedly highest order interest in freedom can be best realized by a specific list. A direct empirical argument that the things on the list have proved to be sufficient, but this is not offered by R. This leaves R. few resources to answer the charge that is particular list is ideological.