Justice and Fairness

One of the great philosophical questions of our time is the question of how to

decide a fair system of justice that could be agreed to by people of all stations of society.

By piecing together the theories of Robert Nozick and John Rawls, we are able to arrive

at a decision on the most appropriate method of determining justice. Rawls has some

very good ideas as to how we are to ensure that the system that we create is fair, but

Nozick effectively criticizes Rawls’ idea by bringing to light several problems that Rawls

cannot defend against.

There are three fundamental premises behind Rawls’ theory of justice put forth in

“Justice as Fairness.” The first of these premises is that all people are dependant on a

social contract. This means that all people must decide to give up certain liberties in

order to create a society in which each person has certain rights and liberties, and that

those rights and liberties are protected from others. This system is necessary in order to

ensure the well-being of all people in a society, because without it, the rights and liberties

of one person might encroach on the rights and liberties of others. An example of this

would be a person’s right to free speech, which under a social contract, is limited in order

to protect the liberties of others. This mutual contribution towards the social contract

contributes to the well being for all.

The second premise behind Rawls’ theory of justice is that a person’s natural

talents are not deserved. The determination of which of us are born with intelligence,

which of us are born with large inheritances, which of us are born with disabilities or

special needs appears to be a random process that is not driven by any intrinsic reason

that one person’s set of natural talents are different from another’s.

The final premise used by Rawls is that we do not deserve our station in society,

meaning that there is no special reason that we were born into the wealth and status that

we were, implying that we do not deserve that station. From this it would follow that

people should all work together to determine a fair system, and that people should not be

biased by these undeserved characteristics. For this reason, Rawls recommends the use

of what he calls a “veil of ignorance”. The veil he describes is a hypothetical and

impractical concept where a fair system is decided by people behind a “veil of

ignorance”, where the people do not know their natural talents or status in society before

they enter the system that they create. He also argues that people would come to agree on

the “difference” principle if they were behind a veil of ignorance. The difference

principle states that inequalities in society are justified only if they raise the status of the

worst-off of the society.

Rawls defends his theory of justice by considering a individuals forming a social

contract from behind a veil of ignorance. He believes that all of the people would agree

to the difference principle. He argues that no one, without knowing their original

position in a society, would agree to inequalities that would lessen the status of the

already worse-off of the society. They would make this decision because without

knowledge of their original position, they would not make a decision supporting hurting

the worst-off because it would be possible for them to end up in that category.

Nozick presents Rawls’ argument fairly, but incompletely. The argument that

Nozick presents is an accurate depiction of Rawls’ theory, including a group of people

determining a social contract that they could agree on. Nozick criticizes Rawls’ argument

first by ceding that the difference principle would quickly be agreed to by the worst-off in

a society because no matter what other inequalities were agreed upon, they would benefit.

The second step he takes is to contradict Rawls in stating that in making the decision,

those who have a highly beneficial original position, or many natural talents, would not

agree to the difference principle, because although it would help others, it would limit

greatly the amount of inequality that would be accessible to them.

The attempt made by Nozick to criticize Rawls’ thought experiment of people in a

society determining a system of justice is effective. Nozick takes extra care when he

writes his refutation of Rawls’ principles to include a passage of Rawls’ that talks about

the justification of the difference people being that it would be necessary for the better-

offs of a society to agree, because they are dependent on the worse-offs because of his

first premise. Nozick’s analysis of this passage is limited because Nozick also consider

the fact that the hypothetical group of people that are making decisions about a fair

system of justice would be behind a veil of ignorance, but it is factually correct because

without the veil of ignorance, neither group would have a specific need to benefit the

other group. Instead the situation Nozick describes requires only one group to cede to the

other. The way that he criticizes Rawls by using this passage is not effective and results

primarily in seeming that Nozick does not consider Rawls’ entire argument, but instead

that it seems Nozick only considers a portion of Rawls’ thesis in forming his refutation,

taking Rawls’ ideas out of context.

The second argument that Robert Nozick puts forth in his critique of Rawls

attempts to contradict the assumptions made about Rawls’ original position. Rawls

argues that when deciding or creating a just and fair system, the only way to attain those

qualities is to do so from behind his “veil of ignorance”. The problem with this theory, as

Nozick points out, is that it makes a very basic assumption that the historic principle of

distribution is wrong. The original position and veil of ignorance are designed

specifically to embody a negative evaluation of the historical perspective of justice,

instead of simply being a method of unbiased evaluation of situations. Nozick believes

that natural endowments should be considered when determining a just or fair system,

because although not being deserved, the historical data is relevant because it would

affect whether or not people would accept a given system. The fact that natural

endowments exist accidentally does not lessen the fact that they do exist, and that it is

possible they exist for a reason. The example that Nozick constructs is that a class of

students, if given the choice to determine a grading system for a recently taken test that

they do not know the results of, the class would decide to follow a system of equality. He

argues that the class would make this decision when they realize they cannot chance upon

historical precedence without knowledge to their standing historically. He also argues

that the example would never result in the use of the historical entitlement because

Rawls’ theory presupposes that this concept is wrong.

I do not find this criticism effective because of his uneven application of Rawls’

original position. The examples and concepts that Nozick uses often refer to a situation

in which people must agree to a system of social justice, and Nozick says that people

would not agree to a system of difference, because although it would benefit the people

who are worse-off, it would not benefit the better-offs as much as another system might

be able to. Although this is a valid point and would change the results of Rawls’ though

experiment, if we reapply Rawls’ original position, the argument over whether or not the

system would be agreed to by the better-offs is moot because all people would be making

the decision without regard to their own social standing. The decisions they made would

be based off of what they believe would be fair, without any knowledge to what social

standing they would have in any given system. The second part of Nozick’s argument

says that people would not agree to inequalities following the difference principle,

because from behind the veil of ignorance, people would not know whether or not they

would be better off or worse of, and would not agree to a situation in which they could be

one of the worse-off. The problem with his argument is that it attacks the idea that the

difference principle could be applied without knowledge of historical precedence, which

one could safely assume to be true.

The critique of Rawls put forth by Nozick is effective in questioning Rawls’

general theory, but at the same time, Rawls can be defended from the criticisms of

Nozick. The first part of Nozick’s critique of Rawls is made up of Nozick questioning

whether or not the difference principle could be agreed upon by those in a society who

would be limited by it. If one will allow oneself to assume that the better-off of a society

would be so dependent on the social contract that they would have to agree to a principle

that benefits the worse-off, then one could also easily assume that the worse-offs are so

dependent on the social contract that they would have to agree to a principle that benefits

the better-off of the society. If the better-off are expected to accept the difference people,

one could also expect that the worse-of of a society would have to accept a granting a

large unequal benefit to the better-offs, because each group must submit to the will of the

society in order to maintain the social contract, and in order to keep society working. This

would be an effective criticism assuming that the situations that Nozick and Rawls were

describing were the same, but they are not. Rawls describes a situation where people do

not know what standing people would have in the society they would create, and would

most likely accept the difference principle in order to minimize how low they could fall

with regards to social justice. Another principle of Rawls that cannot be defended from

Nozick’s criticism is that of the original position, where Nozick argues that Rawls’

premise that we do not deserve our position in society conflicts with the idea of the

original position. This conflict exists because if one cannot create general rules about the

distribution of wealth based on natural talents as well as historical perspective, then one

cannot create a set of rules without bias to how the society is actually going to work after

determining a set of general principles.

In general, I agree with Rawls that a fair system can only be determined by a

group of people behind a veil of ignorance. I also think that the difference principle is a

good justification for inequality in society, because it benefits everyone. Personally, I

believe the an efficiency principle would be better for society, because although it may

harm the worst-off of a society, the average citizen, as well as the well being of the entire

society as a whole would be greatly benefited. I disagree with Nozick’s criticisms

because they do not take into account Rawls’ entire argument, but he does effectively

question the assumptions made by the veil of ignorance.

Rawls presents the idea of the veil of ignorance, and justifies it well as the only

way to justly create a system that does not benefit anyone unfairly, but still allows

inequality and benefit to better-offs. Rawls ideas hold up against Nozick’s criticisms and

can be used if one wishes to determine a fair system of wealth distribution.