Justice as Fairness: A Restatement [Hardcover]

That said, I would agree with the previous reviewer that a reader should at least be conversant in Rawls' ethical theory as described in A Theory of Justice to get the most out of this book. However, to those uninterested in the evolution of his thought and how its shortcomings have been repaired, Justice as Fairness is still a momentous work and will probably be used in introduction to ethics or political philosophy classes everywhere.

An obligatory note, since another reviewer is certain to mention Nozick: Nozick eventually became convinced that the Lockean proviso of justice in acquisitional holdings did not possess the requisite stability that would ensure that liberties owed to free and equal persons would be preserved and recanted some of the conclusions in Anarchy, Utopia, and State. As for Hayek's brilliant works, nobody seriously disagrees with his thesis that central economic planning leads inevitably to abuses as state oversteps individual liberties and that the mechanism of prices in a free market is the best aggregator and distributor of preferences. I just don't see what this has to do with libertarianism. Hayek is too fine a thinker to be shoehorned into such a confining box.

Since the work is essentially a restatement, any review must take into account the effectiveness of that which was restated. For this, I would like to mention one area that Rawls ammended; subsequently, I would like to comment on how this change provided a complete new hermeneutical framework for the book.

At its core, the theory proposed by Rawls is based on a Kantian understanding of human persons and human freedom. Any familiar with Kant's political philosophy will remember the concept of the 'transcendental self', the self that is so completely free of human encumberances and entanglements that he is actually and literally free. This person literally has an autonomous free will and consequently has the capacity to be completely self-legislating. This is, of course, necessary if a person is to abide by the categorical imperative. Kant believes that a person cannot be free unless his will--his capacity to choose--is grounded in something pre-empirical. Rawls seems to believe this too. However, he understands that the idea of the 'trascendental self' is so shrouded in the obscurity of German Idealism as to be unhelpful for the average person. So, he sets out to bring the self to the earth and give it an imaginable, even a empirical, basis. And this is the function of the original position: to bring Kant's 'transcendental self' to the earth and provide a basis for it. This should be kept in mind throughout the reading.

While I enoyed the book thoroughly, I have a number of issues. First, Rawls himself says that the work can be read independent of any prior knowledge, and I take this to be true. Nonetheless, reading Justice as Fairness without preliminary familiarity with A Theory of Justice is bound to make the reading considerably more difficult. The reasons for this are many, the most notable being that Justice as Fairness is a restatement of a theory presented in an earlier work. Its job, essentially, is to fill gaps, answer arguments, and provide clarification that lacked in the original version (not to be confused with the 'original position'). While Rawls alludes to the problems he intends to fix, it's almost impossible to fully grasp without a cursory understanding of A Theory of Justice.

In sum, the work is an excellent piece of analytical philosophy, one that is sure to be around for a while. Nonetheless, I would encourage anyone ready to dig into it to to read--or at least become familiar with--A Theory of Justice.

Adam Glover

Rawls espouses an ingenious social contract theory, an intellectual device in which we are asked to imagine the basis for government behind a "veil of ignorance". This "original position' prevents us from knowing what our position would be in the new regime or even from knowing what our native endowments (intelligence, heatlth, etc.) would be. In this situation, Rawls proposes that we would rationally proceed to developing a society where certain civil and property rights are guaranteed and have priority, where basic institutions are constructed to permit equal opportunity and certain minimum guarantees for education, health care, and economic support. Rawls construes his system as requiring the development of a "property owning democracy" in which basic institutions are constructed to prevent the development of large concentrations of wealth and political power. Rawls' system does not ban inequality but he insists on the existence of the difference principle, a rule that structural inequalities are permitted only if they rebound in some way to the advantage of the less advantages. An important modification of A Theory of Justice that Rawls introduced in Political Liberalism is the emphasis on pluralism and a reduction in some ways of the scope of his system. Rawls points out that modern democracies are pluralistic and contain many who legitimately disagree about the ends of society. Since Rawls original conception of political society can be construed as sponsoring a complete moral system (one of its attractions fo many of his followers, Rawls modified his ideas to insist that his scheme is restricted to political issues. This is a stronger scheme in many ways because it allows Rawls to argue that by restricting the scope of his system, it actually enfranchises citizens to pursue their own diverse ideas of ultimate good.

Rawls' ideas have been and will be debated vigorously. Many will object that despite his effort to narrow the scope of his system to political ideas, it still has important aspects of a complete moral doctrine. For example, in this book, Rawls himself points out that his system has signficant impact on the organization of family life. The difference principle has always been controversial and will continue to be so. Rawls himself points out one problem. He argues that it would not greatly impair economic efficiency but this may not be true. Indeed, I suspect that a property owning democracy, even if tenable, would be less efficient than a modern capitalist welfare state and consequently such a state can arise only after the development of capitalist welfare states. I suspect that one of the reason's Rawls wanted to produce this book is that he hoped a more accessible version of his ideas would spur the development what he regards as a more just world.