Introduction to Rawls: A Theory of Justice

The American philosopher John Rawls was the most influential political thinkers of the late twentieth century. Born in 1921 and died in 2002, he’s responsible for a renaissance in political philosophy.

In this introduction to Rawls, I look at A Theory of Justice, his magnum opus. It was published in 1971 and is a philosophy of what a just and fair society would look like. I like at concepts like the difference principle, justice as fairness, and maximin.

Before Rawls, the dominant political philosophy for at least the previous 100 years been utilitarianism. There were and are many different forms of utilitarianism, but they all have their foundations in a simple premise: the greatest good for the greatest number.

For Rawls, utilitarianism didn’t adequately account for the intuition that people have inalienable rights that cannot be violated for the greater happiness of others.

Rawls writes that the ‘higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society.’

It’s this difference principle, also referred to as maximin – maximise the minimum prospects – that leads Rawls to his formulation of the two principles of ‘justice as fairness'.

The principles are in lexical order; that is, that the first should always be prioritised over the second. They are:

First, each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties which is compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all.

Second, social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

The two principles might generally be summed up like this:

‘All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.’


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Credits:

[biljajanjusevic]

This book has changed my life for the better, as it cast a new light on my profession of an architect, earned me even a scholarship... What I love the most about this rationalization of justice was that he practically showed the universal value of encoding the empathy in our social contract as well as in our public space

[nancymannaerts]

my teacher tried to explain this in 5 months, you managed to do it in 16 minutes :) you saved my exam !!!

[JacobTRex]

An incredible explanation of Justice as Fairness in both scope and application. Thanks for taking the time to produce this.

[pabjdp]

I just came out of a full course on Rawls theory of Justice and the 16 minute video adequately captures the main points really nicely and accurately

[Razzha]

Congrats on the full time job :D Happy to see success come to your great content

[juliemelville]

Thanks ever so much! You are a star in my high school TOK classes in Brazil. Ilove how you really bring together contemporary isssues and really analyze them well and constantly raise questions. With this you give me arguments to silence those critics of humanities degrees.

[tanyasmith]

This has been a tremendous help in my understanding of the theory of justice! Thanks so much

[garruksson]

Great video as always. Would you ever consider making a video about philosohy in general? Like book recommendations, your intellectual journey thus far, studying tips and so on.

[anypercentdeathless]

Strikes home as an artist living in BEIJING.
Thank you.

[nate]

This video put my professor's lecture to shame. Great video, thank you!

[devonott-barilli]

This was so easily digestible for my MS reading... thank you for helping me understand this ideology!

[tormunnvii]

Rawls is an interesting example of the limits of moral philosophy divorced from actually existing human subjects with actually existing historical social relations. In other words, there’s no such thing as an Individual with Individual reason. Great video as always.

[peroz]

Your videos have been improving immensely. Keep up the good work!

[ivanbenisscott]

One of my favourite areas of philosophy! Keep making these wonderful videos my friend. Maybe do Nozick next?

[johnarbuckle]

Rawls is one of the core thinkers that shaped my ideas.
I recommend to anyone his "Theory of Justice" which I consider, with Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies" (with all its flaws), the epitome of liberal democratic thought.

[Enzaio]

Great news that you can do this fulltime now! You deserve it.

[admiralsnackbar]

Man, the soundtrack for this presentation is captivating. Im writing in a second document, while only listening to this video. When you are not watching the presentation, you clearly take better notice of the soundtrack

[baimjohnson]

Thanks for posting this! Although I’m not a Westerner and wasn't brought up in a liberal environment, I admire Rawls a lot. I wonder whether you’d be interested in talking about Rawls’ Law of Peoples since it seems to me that he’s trying to apply his theory of justice into an international arena, and even discussing Kazanistan.

[Dorian_sapiens]

This comes up a bit where the video notes that Rawls's theory of justice is compatible with both a liberal capitalist and a libertarian socialist society, but it seems like a significant weakness in the theory that its arguments could be employed to justify a neoliberal economic order. In fact, it often is: we must allow the "captains of industry" to accumulate wealth unimpeded by social controls, because that is what allows them to create jobs, innovate technologies, etc., to the benefit of everyone. That's the difference principle, right?

[fughlif]

very clear logic, thank you very much and keep up the good work. Compliments from an NYU student.