Introduction to Rawls: A Theory of Justice
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2024
- 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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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
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
An incredible explanation of Justice as Fairness in both scope and application. Thanks for taking the time to produce this.
my teacher tried to explain this in 5 months, you managed to do it in 16 minutes :) you saved my exam !!!
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.
This has been a tremendous help in my understanding of the theory of justice! Thanks so much
Congrats on the full time job :D Happy to see success come to your great content
Anarcho-capitalism the only solution if crackhead want their pipe its their choice
Strikes home as an artist living in BEIJING.
Thank you.
Your videos have been improving immensely. Keep up the good work!
This was so easily digestible for my MS reading... thank you for helping me understand this ideology!
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.
Thanks! This was an excellent introduction to some of Rawls' ideas! Very helpful in my studies!
This video put my professor's lecture to shame. Great video, thank you!
Great Video! We love the explanation, finally understood Rawls!
Such a great and helpful clip. Thanks for it !
Really well done. Thank you for this.
Tienes el mejor canal de filosofía que se puede encontrar, gran contenido.
Best video on Rawlsian Justice on CZcams so far.
Excellent explanation. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks!
Great news that you can do this fulltime now! You deserve it.
Just ordered the book. Thanks for the primer!
such a concise and helpful video - thank you! i really appreciate the slight bristolian accent as well!
i just discovered you and your account and i love the way you explain! Thanks so much for the content :)
A wonderful explanation
wow! what a great video and amazingly narrated. Wish you could narrate everything
very clear logic, thank you very much and keep up the good work. Compliments from an NYU student.
Great Video! Thanks for sharing
Congratulations! Love your channel.
I just discovered this channel by this video. Having some in-depth knowledge of the subject matter, I highly recommend this introduction to Rawls. :)
Found your video by accident, doing a coursera course about philosophie in French. Thank you, I may well come back for other videos about philosophers
Thank you for this. Great video.
What wonderful news on my birthday the 2nd that you are financially independent! Long may 'Then and now' prosper. 👏
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.
batılı değilimdediniz bende doğuluyum. lütfen bana john rawls'ın adalet teorisiyle ilgili birazbilgilerinizi aktarırmısınız. buna çok ihtiyacım var
Fantastic Video Lewis!
Thank you, this is great
Subscribed! Keep the videos coming!
Perfect sir, thank you !
Great explanation !
Great video as always. Would you ever consider making a video about Amartya Sen The Idea of Justice ?
Great video, so informative!
Brilliantly made video.
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.
I just finished Popper's 'The Open Society and its Enemies" and wow - I couldn't put it down. I was debating over Rawls or another next and will go with Theory of Justice.
It's funny, then, that Popper was pretty consistently full of shit in that book. He mischaracterised the (arguments of the) people was trying to criticize so badly it's not funny.
@@JinjaOnHere Historian with an interest in Plato, actually.
@@JinjaOnHere lmao what
Helped sooooooooooooooo much with writing a paper.
Thanks!
This looks suspiciously similar to what Pierre J. Proudhon advocated 130 years earlier from Rawls. Even the arguments of fairness and justice are almost the same not the mention, equality of access to the property for work. Although Rawls concluded private property as a right in and of itself, Proudhon concluded it is an impossibility and theft.
It would be really cool to see a comparison video =)
That is a very interesting point. It is true there are many similarities between the two, however Rawls' paper focuses more on the advancement of the liberalism school of thought with the assumption that people under the veil of ignorance would also support the idea of an established society of some kind to enforce the rules agreed upon under the veil, while Proudhon focused his works mostly on advancing his theory of anarchism (and ultimately defining the word itself). If Proudhon were to hear Rawls' opinion on social contract I believe he would say those under the veil of ignorance would reject any kind of hierarchy if they truly were under such a veil, and instead be led to a society without an authoritative governing body.
@@jacksonminer4746 I have been thinking about your idea since I read TJ, Maybe the first principle of liberal freedom needs to be replaced by a different conception of freedom, like for example Freedom as non-domination proposed by Phillip Petit, but the problem I see is how to create institutions that meet no-dominating criteria. Best Regards.
thanks for the video, i will be using the video content for my assigmwnt in Uni.
Great video quality mate
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?
Exactly! Rawlsian, Kantian and utilitarian ethics all arrive back at libertarianism.
I had this question too. It seemed like his maxi-min principle would lead to accepting the starkly unequal society presented in the utilitarian comparison since it provides more for the society as a whole. The idea of the least advantaged needing to be "better off" in order to justify this feels vulnerable without addressing what they're better off compared to. The 10% with the million dollars could claim the 90% with 10 are better off than they would be with nothing at all, but that doesn't demonstrate that they're the best off they COULD be. Even if we keep the partitions of the population the same, why not a $999,995 and $15 split? Or even a $999,990 and $15 split, granting the orthodox economic assumption that trying to limit inequality leads to a failure to maximize the whole societal product? This seems to be where the neoliberal justification for ever-increasing inequality of "growing the pie" sneaks in. It seems extremely difficult, if not impossible, to rigorously prove that a certain arrangement provides the best "floor," if you will, so the technocrats fall back on a utilitarian calculus of substituting that hard-to-define "best" with metrics like global GDP growth. So I'm curious if I'm missing something in Rawls' theory, or if it's just the practical result of applying it to a capitalist society that leads back to this particular form of utilitarianism.
@@alynames7171 the key point that you have ignored is the veil of ignorance part. Because if you couldn't know whether or not you were a part of the 1% or the 99%, you would want the lowest of the low to have high living standards because there is a chance that you belong to that group.
Also the second thing you misunderstood is that Rawls's principle isn't about the benefit of the society as a whole (like in utilitarianism), it's saying that inequality is acceptable only if it's benefial to all people as individuals.
One of my favourite areas of philosophy! Keep making these wonderful videos my friend. Maybe do Nozick next?
Or Habermas 👌
Lew Rockwell?
Or leo strauss😁
@@hishamgornass4577 oh yeah, I love me some Strauss. Maybe, add either Rorty or Berlin, or maybe add the Romantic philosophers like Herder and Vico, if he hasn't done them yet.
Totally agree! As a spurs fan, I’m glad we can at least agree on great CZcams content :)
Thank you for the info
Great intro to Rawls.
I'm not English-speaker but I can understand most parts of the video, thanks ! I can learn English as well as my course !
Thank you
This was so helpful
It's very helpful! Thankss
Great video!
Hello, would it be possible to provide an example to this theory in todays world? I feel like i understand this theory but i still cant find my way in thinking of an example about it. Thank you
Do Jerry Cohen's criticisms of Rawls next!
I feel it is wonderful
great video
I like the way you described Rawls impact and positive attribut regarding his theory of justice. However, I Believe the cons were not so talked about. What more cons are there to his theory?
Irronically I looked up this video because this explains my philosophy
After 3 years i watched it im preparing for a exam and political science and international relations is my opinion subject and really the way you made understand i felt relieved cuz it was really a hard topic for me understand Rawls theory...
Could you please make a video on theory of state it'll help in this subject ....
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.
That's an interesting objection. Not sure I understand, but you seem to be saying the problem is that he imagines each person as isolated from their web of social connections; and that, if he accounted for those connections, he would come up with a different theory of justice. When you deny there is such thing as individual reason, am I right to read the emphasis on "individual" rather than on "reason"?
It's a good start though. Right now what are the fairest countries to live in? I'd say the nordics and some other european countries, and those countries are quite Rawlsian I'd say.
This is, in my opinion, the best criticism of the Rawlsian model.
Here the distinction is needed between reason and rationality, that Rawls made explicitly on his last book „Justice a Fairness, A Restatement“ and is common in german philosophy of Immanuel Kant. (Practical) Reason represents itself in the original position with its restrictions in the veil of ignorance, which are restrictions from arbritraryness and randomness. You also could define reason as rationality without contingent factors.
Rationality represents itself in the perception of the good of the people in the original position, which are maximized and the means of achieving the goals in it are used to achieve it as much as possible. One‘s perception is to be differentiated from others, but that doesn‘t mean, that they don‘t need themselves. It rather means, that for a society with stable and just communities, you need to care for the primary good of (self)respect of individuals (and that is where communities are important, who respect the right of their members)
It is correct, that moral philosophy doesn‘t concentrate in the historical social relations of humans but rather with reason as I defined it. But that is because, if moral philosophy would, this would lead to a subordination of ethics to contingencies.
So individual reason is real in a certain sense because of the fact, that the equal liberties are more or less applied already in certain countries. Maybe you are talking about individual rationality, which I think also is real considering, that a person wants to maximize his perception of good for himself. That doesn‘t mean we are big brains or something, no thinking about something also can be rational considering thinking too much is exhausting. That also doesn‘t mean that people are isolated, because individuals need other individuals to get the primary good of self respect and to supplement each other, because rationality mandates for example that you focus on few plans of live. With that other people‘s achieved life goals also make you happy, while yours are also achieved.
@@Dorian_sapiens My Emphasis is on both, taken together (Individual Reason), and separately (Individuals/Reason). I believe in Reason, but only as something collectively arrived at and historically conditioned by previous forces, or you might say "actually existing reason". Likewise, for "Individuals", who, contra what many libertarians would have you believe, are in fact not independent entities with free will, but are instead containers of particular modes of reason contingent upon the material and social conditions of their environment and the Broader Epistemic limits of their particular position, that is both teleologically and spatially.
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
Thanks a lot for your content, I have to teach Rawls this week and your video helped me A LOT to get my head around A Theory of Justice. I was stressed out about his theory because I remembered that it left me unconfortable when I studied it in my pre-graduate years. Now I know that it's just that I am baffled by liberals rediscovering social-democracy a century too late.
Using Rawls’s “veil of Ignorance” as a conceptual basis for establishing a just society, design a new social contract from scratch.
What would this new society look like?
How would you distribute wealth and power?
How would you define fairness and equality in your new society?
Would you strive for absolute equality between people or not and why?
How you produce a fair, egalitarian society
Brilliant
Good effort
Informative and concise. Love it. Cheers!
Thanks 👍
Your Rothko behind you is delightfully haunting and beautiful. Aside from that, does any actual utilitarian really believe that a society where there's 10% of the people who are slaves and bring a lot of good to the other 90% is a society which really obeys the utilitarian principle of the most good for the greatest amount of people? I can see hundreds of arguments that would support the claim that such a society would most definitely not bring the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of people and that a society where 100% of the people would be free but have less material wealth would definitely be a society that has the greatest amount of good for the greatest amount of people. It seems the critics of utilitarianism always take the "good" to be the cheapest possible kinds of goods like orgasms and making bills rain, always taking the worst possible version of the utilitarian argument.
Agreed! Critics of utilitarianism often ignore diminishing marginal utility which, for example, means that if you have a lot of money, a dollar brings less utility then if you were poor. Diminishing marginal utility means that a maximum utilitarian society would probably result in very close to equal wealth for everyone.
Thanks sir from Bargarh Jai MAA SAMLEI India
at 0:45 who are the pictured utilitarians? They all, apart from one, look like the same dude
the most left one is John Stuart Mill and the middle one is Jeremy Bentham, the rest idk
Leftmost is Mill, then for whatever reason there are 4 Benthams, it was only really Mill and Bentham pushing for utilitarianism proper, the only other serious modern proponent is Peter Singer, but he has his own niche form of utilitiarianism
Can I get pdf format of what yu did yu say about Rawls theory of justice as fairness.
Had to laugh at the irony of cake cutter stealing a berry! 5:50
This is great as an introduction prior to reading his book. In the real world, people choose an insurance system. Perhaps they would choose an insurance system to address the risk of being born poor or with fewer opportunities at birth.
what was the dependency critique ?
This helps me a lot for my Social & Political Philosophy course
What's that at 4:03? Can anyone explain? Sounds like it's not happily worded.
Please could you add captions to this video? I have to google some word definitions in order to fully understand what you say and argue. Seeing words instead of hearing helps a lot. Thank you 🙂
Captions are distracting, this video is in English and the creator assumes that people people listening to it speak English.
Quality video on my favorite Philosopher. Rawls is the best, and its criminal we have taken very little from him into politics in the 50 years since he started publishing this stuff.
thanks for disclosing the source of modern evil
Turn on membership, would earn you a little more 😉
I thought of a max min principle of justice of my own. Maximize the degrees of freedom at the individual and societal levels while minimizing the amount of conflict at both the individual and societal levels. It seems to me that we all strive to be able to do as much as we can whenever and wherever we can, but the limiting factor is that we don't live in a bubble (a society of one). We also can't just do anything we want, like drinking and doing drugs to the max, because it creates conflict at the individual level (sickness and death).
That’s not what maximin is. Maximin is maximizing benefits for the worst off in society (the minimum).
The depictions of Rawls' arguments against Utilitarianism make him look like he doesn't understand Utilitarianism at all. Utilitarianism isn't "Do what gives people the most total money regardless of its distribution" but would instead obviously say not to starve and malnourish 40% of your people for only $10 of profit, because that $10 very likely isn't going to be capable of buying so much more utility than the utility lost from such starvation and suffering associated with such poverty.
I'm not sure if this depiction of Rawls' argument was accurate or if maybe the summary left out a few key details, but I'm curious which it is.
Doesn't that seem like exactly what's happening in the US? When business undercuts wages it inevitably undercuts its own market. If business approached labor and wages more equitably (similar to the way Henry Ford did) imagining its employees first as consumers, we would be in a far better place, not only socially, but economically, as well. Tax breaks for businesses could more easily be absorbed by workers if wages were closer to the actual value than independent line item expenses. This is where the impulse toward collective bargaining comes from and would not be necessary in a more holistic view of society. But Milton Friedman convinced us that business has no social responsibility. Which is clearly wrong. In a consumer society, business is as much the engine of society as the people who participate in it. They are not separable.
This comes down to Rawls not addressing the difference between classical and neo-classical utilitarianism. Classical boils humans down to essentially being utility maximises, not taking rights into account sufficiently enough. Neo-classical utilitarianism has rights at the heart of the doctrine and holds against Rawls critique better. When Rawls states utilitarianism doesn't account for differences amongst people this would be directed against the classical version. I recommend Ian Shapiro's lectures and book on this called 'The Moral Foundations of Politics'.
@@jakgalbraith51 That would make a lot of sense, thanks. The only Utilitarianism I studied was that of ethics, so I wasn't familiar with how it was being used in this case I guess.
Thank you for this. I absolutely agree. Its an oversimplification on the video's part. Obviously, all utilitarians factor in the law of diminishing returns. The more money you have the less valuable to you a smaller amount of it is. A poor person is much "happier" (better off) with an extra $100, than a rich person.. usually.
@@codacreator6162 Henry Ford raised wages to reduce employee turnover - not to increase sales. It doesn't increase businesses' profits if you raise their costs (wages). Without bashing on you specifically, I'm really sick of half-assed Keynesian garbage that displays complete ignorance of economics and disdain for advocates of a free market. At least know your enemy.
♥️
Does Rawls actually make that simplistic a critique of consequentialism?
Why is the equality principle more important than the difference principle according to rawls?
This is probably a silly question but I still don't know what philosophical belief he believes in (utilitarianism, etc...)
That’s it if you have money and you watch this, it would only be fair that you share some to the content creator. That would be justice.
So how is that better than a Utilitarism which postulates the general idea that more equal distribution of wealth (or more generally of efforts meant to maximize the good) leads to the great good.
That's something which could easily be rationally justified: food is worth more to the starving person than to the rich person who already has plenty of food. Thus, you will do a greater good by giving food to the starving person rather than to the rich person; and this is true to some extent even if you have the choice between giving a simple sandwich to the starving person and giving nothing to the rich person or giving a refined meal prepared by a five Michelin-star chef to the rich person and giving nothing to the starving one.
So at 6:55, with a Utilitarian mindset I can perfectly argue that the second situation is better than the first one. And more generally, all principles that Rawls considered to be necessary to a Just society are compatible and can be justified by Utilitarianism.
06:55 It should be 10% more
1*
Thanks a lot for the video! What is meant by "the least advantaged" in 2)a) at 11:20?
the poorest or the less skilled maybe?
Hey! I’m currently writing a huuuge assignment, and this saved my ass. I was wondering if you used any sources I can site in my assignment?
Do your own work...?
Good one. Red Pill. Matrix Crew. Trinity and Neo.
For me, Rawls has constructed a sophisticated political version of the 'Golden Rule' - as expressed by Jesus, Confucius, and Hillel (among others). It does assume a level of rationality ('enlightened self-interest') which is currently an ideal, and seldom a reality.
wow...
What would be an example of inequality that would be better for the least advantaged better off? If there is no amswer to that: Why not just say that inequality is by default bad?
The motivating effect of higher status that results in more productivity combined with a strong welfare state that redistributes that new wealth? But really, my problem with the difference principle is that we have no idea how rich an "equal" society would be, so we have no reference to measure it.
Why do we have to start with the basic structure of society when we talk about justice?
Without understanding the division of people in a society we cannot serve justice to anyone
13:16 *partay