Wednesday 22 July 2015

The Rawl'asian Social Contract

The traditional social contract has flaws, it thus received criticisms now and then. Some of the flaws included that it is nothing but a good thought experiment for trying to understand why we are obliged to obey rulers. Thought experiments are useful in only explaining a particular point but never a legitimate basis for establishing the political order[1] if the social contract dimension was to be removed from the theories of Locke, Hobbes and the rest then their political conceptions would look hollow. We now know from 150 years of anthropology that human beings were inherently political, Aristotle took this view[2]. Aquinas also wrote, “It is natural for man, more than any other animal, to be a social and political animal, to live in a group”. Therefore there was no pre-political condition. Therefore the revival of the social contract tradition that Rawls led tried to answer some of this questions. He replaced natural law with Immanuel Kant’s ethics and using a hypothetical contract he tries to ask the question what would people agree to ? Rather than what did people agree to?
John Rawls, A theory of Justice. Not a captivating read, his ideas kind of get obscured or more complicated than they should be but on further research it was discovered that Mr Rawls first wrote a couple of articles that led to the book and he used to circulate them and receive criticisms and whenever he received a criticism he would add three paragraphs to answer the criticism, the most famous article was justice as fairness. So what are his ideas?
He tries to develop a theory of justice by revising the social contract tradition of theorizing about justice associated with the 17th and 18th century writers John Locke[3], Jean-Jacques Rousseau[4], and Immanuel Kant.
Locke saw legitimate authority arising from the delegation of the citizens’ right to self-preservation, defense, Rousseau believed that the social contract’s basis should be the general will of the people. According to Rawls justice is what free and equal persons would agree to as basic terms of social cooperation in conditions that are fair for this purpose. This famous idea is called justice as fairness[5]. In summary he posits that justice cannot allow that a few suffer for the greater good, it does not allow the interest of the greater good to trample on the few[6]. Rawls imagined that he was coming up with a new social contract but based on fairness. Fairness that would address the social inequalities in life, in order to do this we must first go to the original position, the original position is the hypothetical situation developed Rawls as a thought experiment to replace the imagery of a savage state of nature of prior political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes[7]. In the original position, the parties select principles that will determine the basic structure of the society they will live in. This principles are for a society that is well ordered, have the same public conception of justice, give allegiance to this public conception and it is common knowledge that among the people that this holds water.
Rawls also focuses on the basic structure of this society because he says that it is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound form the start for example in society there are deep inequalities that we have no power over for example a baby cannot choose its parents or their social position it is this basic structure inequalities that the principles of justice must apply[8] .
 So what are these principles? What would we agree these principles to be? If we cannot even decide what is good in life how do we agree what this principles are going to be?  Rawls proposes that even though we disagree about what is ultimately good, we may agree that there are certain general purpose good things that everyone would want regardless of whatever else they want. These are primary social goods: he defines them as those things any rational person who gave priority to developing and exercising her capacities for a sense of justice and for a conception of her good would want.  The primary social goods, to give them in broad categories, are rights, liberties, and opportunities, and income and wealth[9].
In coming up with this principles of justice one must be behind a veil of ignorance, this is a method of determining the morality of a certain issue based upon the following thought experiment: parties to the original position know nothing about their particular abilities, tastes, and position within the social order of society. When such parties are selecting the principles for distribution of rights, positions, and resources in the society they will live in, the veil of ignorance prevents them from knowing about who they will be in that society. . The veil of ignorance makes possible a unanimous choice of a particular conception of justice. Without these limitations on knowledge the bargaining problem of the original position would be hopelessly complicated[10].
What will the rational choice be for fundamental principles of society? The only safe principles will be fair, public, general and universal in application principles[11], for you do not know whether you would suffer or benefit from the structure of any biased institutions. Indeed the safest principles will provide for the highest minimum standards of justice in the projected society[12]. For example how does one go about cutting a cake amongst a group of individuals? Best case would be to let the person with the knife have the last slice, he would then try to cut each slice as fair as possible so as to get the best remaining slice however he cannot fully rely on the last slice.
Therefore this society can only be made if it conforms to two rules;
1.      Equal Liberty. "Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all[13]"
2.      Social Inequality. "Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair[14]
In this sense it’s not even really a social contract ,he is not asking will you agree with one another based on this principles of justice but will I, the reader agree with him that any rational person would choose the principles that he posits , some similarity is seen with Hobbes because to Hobbes the social contract isn’t legitimate because people agreed to it but because it was the only rational thing to do, if not then people would have descended to civil war.
These principles of justice are what could have been used to evaluate what government do and therefore see whether it is just. Rawls attacked utilitarianism citing it does not take into account peoples’ differences.
Does Rawls progress the social contract? Rawls in my view brings a whole new aspect of the social contract or rather he changes the subject, he says that people are alike in some aspects and unlike in others.so rather than focusing on utility lets focus on resources, the primary resources that everyone needs regardless of whether one will be a banker or an artist, this is quintessential in political theory as the basic issue is normally what the state might or might not do. He is against the habit of states applying utilitarianism to how it governs us or rather how it plays its obligations under the ‘social contract’. If I was to borrow the words of Prof Ian Shapiro, Rawls calls for ‘resourcism’.




[1] http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/06/taking-locke-seriously
[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/supplement3.html
[3] Second Treatise of government, 1689
[4] The Social Contract, 1762
[5]John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Excerpts) Revised edn, Harvard University Press pg 4
[6] Ibid, Pg 3
[7] The Leviathan
[8] Pg 7 Supra (n 7)
[9] Pg 79,Ibid
[10] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice. Pg 121
[11] J. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Pg 115,
[12] Dr. Charles Kay, Rawls, Justice as Fairness
[13] Pg 220 supra (n 7)
[14] Pg 72 Ibid