RAWLS' THEORY

Application of Rawls' Theory of Justice at the Global Level

Application of Rawls' Theory of Justice at the Global Level

Introduction

The word Justice is from the Latin jus (law or right). This term denotes several ideas explaining what each is appropriate. One such notion is that of formal justice, that can be devised as follows: no one ought to be dealt with in a changed manner from anyone else, regardless of the different variations between persons, apart from when one or more of these causes comprise an excellent rationale for doing so. However necessary and defensible, this rule points to another notion of justice, namely substantial justice, which concerns the specification of what reasons are good reasons for treating some people differently from others (Langan, 2009, pp. 47 - 51). Rawls believed to have radically reinvigorated Anglo-American political philosophy; he is believed to be one of the most significant political philosophers in the 20th century.

His most renowned work, A Theory of Justice (1971: 25), disputes for a idea of “justice as fairness': that is to say, that the demands of justice are satisfied when co-operators can equally accept reciprocal justice theory and when their basic monetary, political, and communal institutions (the basic structure) are mutually understood as satisfying these rules” (Lovett, 2011, pp. 50 - 67).

The foundations for justice as fairness stem from Rawls's rejection of utilitarianism and his Kantian belief that every individual has an interest in formulating a notion of the good, in being motivated by this notion, and in living cooperatively with others, under mutually consistent terms of respect and reciprocal benefit. In this regard, justice can be understood as fair when a cooperative scheme could be accepted and confirmed by every member involved. The paper discusses the possibility to apply Rawls' theory of justice at the global level (Sterba, 2000, pp. 34 - 45).

Background

Rawls argued for his justice theory in two ways. On the one hand, he imagined a unique place in which people choosing the justice theory could do so behind the veil of unawareness, i.e. with knowledge of the general features, desires, abilities, and need of humans, but with no particular knowledge of where anyone could stand corresponding to other humans. From this position, these people could employ the maximin rule of game theory, which is the rule according to which we are to assume that alternative course of action or policy whose worst product is superior to the worst outcome of every other (Weithman, 2009, pp. 3 - 28). In this way, each individual could omit to choose any approach that, however beneficial to society at large, could involve a benefit below the communal minimum for some who, given the unawareness blanket, could contain the individual making the choice. Also, “Rawls supported the justice theory he formulated by arguing that they were in accord with the considered judgments of competent judges of moral matters”. With the years, he tended to emphasize this latter approach and deemphasize the former (Freeman, 2010, ...