Review of Justice as Fairness by John Rawls

...

Third, the critique from the utilitarian perspective on the principles was not explained clearly. It has mentioned in the introduction of the paper that Rawls’ point of view was in opposite to utilitarianism. Rawls used another principle to see what is Justice. From the perspective of utilitarianism, the system was justice as long as it maximize the overall utility. They put the interest of the greatest before the individuals. For example, there are four residents in each society A and B. Society A has 100 unit of wealth but all holds by one person and society B has 80 units of wealth and equally distribute to four people. Utilitarianism will obviously think the society A is better than B, but it does not make sense to us. And so Rawls used the fairness as a more proper principle on social justice issue. Rawls regarded Justice as Fairness by reducing the effect of social circumstance and natural talents. He first urged to ensure the basic liberty of individuals and emphasized equal opportunity to everyone especially the least advantaged. However, Group 3 has criticized that the two principles cannot maximize utility from the perspective of utilitarianism that Rawls has long been argued that utilitarianism ignores the procedural justice. In a word, Group 3 needs to clarify how utilitarianism can solve Rawl’s concern first. Unless Group 3 can explain in what views utilitarian principle is better than Rawl’s principle, then Rawl’s principle cannot maximize the overall utility will not be a problem. But Group 3 did not mention them yet but keeps using the argument that Rawls has opposed to criticize him. The statement thereby was not solid and convincing. It would fall into a vicious cycle if Group 3 kept using utilitarianism as objection.

Forth, it was not reasonable and convincing enough to use libertarianism as the objection of Rawls’ theory. Group 3 has mentioned that according to libertarianism, the second principle of inequalities violated the right of self-ownership. Then, they quoted Cohen’s statement to argue that every human being had full and exclusive right to ourselves. Therefore, it was not reasonable for a human being to dedicate oneself’s talent and intelligence as he/ she deserved it. However, Rawls thoguht Cohen ignored the inequality caused by the difference of family background and talents. It was too extreme focusing on right of individual. He pointed out that any inborn talent or intelligence should devote to the society wholly as they were not earned by endeavors. He has already discovered the problem that the equal opportunities was still not fair enough if the effect of natural talent is not reduced. Thus, he used difference principle to ensure institution was in favor of the least advantaged. Therefore, Group 3 used this argument as criticism was relatively weak as Rawls has provided proper explanation. Therefore, Group 3 should provide other stronger argument.

All in all, Group 3 explained very well on the theory. However, their criticism needed to elaborate more. Otherwise, it was not persuasive enough.