A Theory of Natural Injustice A Theory of Justice, a 1971 book by John Rawls, is sometimes regarded as the most important work of philosophy of the 20th century. Its basic premise is that it is possible to imagine a situation in which, despite the many different views of justice that many different people believe in, all these people would nonetheless arrive at an operational consensus on what justice should look like. We all know how to ensure that a child -or anyone else, for that matter- will cut a cake into equal slices. If, for instance, the cake is to be shared with 4 other children, he or she cuts it into 5 slices. However, the other children have the first choices of which piece of cake to take; the child who does the cutting goes last. In that case, it is in his or her interest to divide the cake into equal parts. Suppose, said Rawls, that no-one knew ahead of time to whom he (or she) would be born. That is, presume you are a soul in Heaven about to enter life on Earth. But you have no idea who your parents will be, whether you will become male or female, American or Brazilian, born into a well-to-do family or one that is impoverished. You won't know if you will be black or white or Asian or anything else. The question is: How would you design a system of justice under these circumstances? Rawls' answer is that you would be meticulous in seeing to it that the system was as totally fair to all people as possible. You would do this regardless of your politics or religion or anything else. >From a Radical Centrist perspective, however, this model of justice is nonsensical. This is because it defies the laws of nature. Quite simply, nature does not tolerate any kind of human concept of "justice." That is, the search for absolute justice is an impossible quest. Nature is unjust by design. Evolution is not a system whereby justice prevails, it is a system whereby the most fit survive, those who can reproduce themselves or reproduce their values and ideas in a society which is perpetuated in history. Nature does this by unequal distribution of talents and skills, plus the capacity of adaptation. And no-one can possibly start out equal to everyone else. Biology is very clear about this, as is opportunity, as are environmental factors and still other considerations. Evolution ensures that we are unequal, that there will be Alpha males and Alpha females, Betas, and all the rest. Moreover, we all have parents. Most mothers and fathers will want the best for their children, but they define what "best" means, and it will differ from one family to the next. As well, some parents are indifferent to the success of their offspring, or at most only somewhat concerned. The result is structural inequality from the point of conception throughout childhood and beyond. This is inescapable. Because injustice is intrinsic to the human species, Rawls' argument is based on a fantasy. What he calls the "original position" cannot exist in the real world. It can be imagined but, like the ontological argument for the existence of God, it has no validity. It is intellectually dishonest, it uses as a working premise what cannot exist and attributes to an abstract construction, tangible properties that, in reality, are not tangible in any way. Of course, we want justice, fairness, a sense of "right," or else we cannot respect ourselves or our society. Morality is not a luxury; it seems to be "hard wired" into us by virtue of the need we have as a social species to co-operate with one another to survive and reproduce and flourish. But justice must be realistic or else it is dysfunctional and produces social failure in the name of justice. Is it fair that someone who grows to only 5 feet - 4 inches in height cannot possibly play for the University of Kentucky basketball team? Where is justice when women bear children and go through a number of biological transformations in the process and men go about their business as if nothing has happened? And what about someone who grows to 6 feet tall with a large body frame who would like to become a jockey? What about an attractive young woman who would like to play the role of the Witch of Endor in the theater or an ugly hag who wishes she could play the part of a girlfriend of James Bond in a movie? The concept of justice in these cases is meaningless. It does not apply and cannot apply. Which is to say that the view that we should have justice in society -which is a common ideal- must allow for whole classes of exceptions. The real question is: When is the concept of justice relevant and when it is irrelevant? The "problem of justice" is not at all what Rawls said it was. The problem concerns the relevance of the concept. "Justice" assumes that life is a zero sum game. But life is anything but a game and while it can be zero sum in some respects in others it can be win / win or open-ended. There is an evolutionary imperative that should never be overlooked: Make the most of what you have, of what you are, of what opportunities are available to you. Most of the time this has little or nothing to do with justice. Indeed, some of the greatest successes in history consist of people overcoming injustice to accomplish great things. This is anything but an apologetic on behalf of injustice; as much as possible we should seek a better, more just world. Hopefully this proposition has the quality of a self-evident truth. Nonetheless it simply is false that all things can be judged by any standard of justice. This includes the applications that Rawls insisted are necessary for a just society, specifically with respect to distribution of wealth. But when are egalitarian societies possible? In conditions of nomadic tribal existence where accumulation of 'capital goods' would become a burden and interfere with the kind of mobility necessary for survival. In religious communes where each person's values are centered on serving a higher cause and a cause that demands sharing resources and lifestyle simplicity. Among children at Summer camp. In the military -among soldiers of equal rank. in time of war. Among subsistence farmers. This pretty much exhausts the inventory. This being the case, the political imperative is not distributive justice but systems design such that talent is recognized for what it is, in which each person finds a place where his or her skills are put to good use for his or her benefit along with the common good, in which crime is not tolerated nor incompetence allowed to exist in positions of responsibility, where blatant favoritism is regarded as noxious, and where people are honest and compassionate. As much as possible a sense of fairness and justice should be part of the mix but we need to recognize that, by its nature, justice has limits. It is not valid to posit as a standard of evaluation the possible shape of a whole society governed by justice. This is because injustice is built into nature and human nature. Or because justice may be irrelevant. But it may well be an advantage to look at both sides to an issue, or all sides, it may be an advantage to take into account the insights of a diversity of opinions, and it may be an advantage to synthesize a variety of viewpoints. It may be a liability not to do these things. But there should never be resort to false equivalences, which Rawlsian thinkers seem susceptible to, nor one-size-fits-all understanding of justice. You don't judge children by adult standards -even as you also do not grant children adult responsibilities or rewards. You don't judge women by the same criteria as men, certainly not in all areas where biology and anatomy would make doing so a travesty, as with respect to military combat, for instance. You don't judge the unfortunate by the same standards as the wealthy -among other things in the resources each group has to afford nutritious foods or legal counsel. You need to make allowances. However, the point is realism, not only some semblance of justice. No amount of distributed justice can possibly make a child an adult, a woman a man, or a less educated low income person into a well educated highly paid professional. The real question is how do we deal with natural injustice? How can we create good lives for as many people as possible given the fact that sometimes -or often- justice is impossible? Billy Rojas September 27, 2015 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wikipedia outline of Rawls' philosophy of justice : ...Rawls develops what he claims are principles of justice through the use of an artificial device he calls the Original position in which everyone decides principles of justice from behind a _veil of ignorance_ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance) . This "veil" is one that essentially blinds people to all facts about themselves so they cannot tailor principles to their own advantage:
"...no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like. I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance." According to Rawls, ignorance of these details about oneself will lead to principles that are fair to all. If an individual does not know how he will end up in his own conceived society, he is likely not going to privilege any one class of people, but rather develop a scheme of justice that treats all fairly. In particular, Rawls claims that those in the Original Position would all adopt a maximin strategy which would maximise the prospects of the least well-off. "They are the principles that rational and free persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamentals of the terms of their association." (Rawls, p 11) Rawls claims that the parties in the original position would adopt two such principles, which would then govern the assignment of rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages across society. The difference principle permits inequalities in the distribution of goods only if those inequalities benefit the worst-off members of society. Rawls believes that this principle would be a rational choice for the representatives in the original position for the following reason: Each member of society has an equal claim on their society’s goods. Natural attributes should not affect this claim, so the basic right of any individual, before further considerations are taken into account, must be to an equal share in material wealth. What, then, could justify unequal distribution? Rawls argues that inequality is acceptable only if it is to the advantage of those who are worst-off. The agreement that stems from the original position is both hypothetical and ahistorical. It is hypothetical in the sense that the principles to be derived are what the parties would, under certain legitimating conditions, agree to, not what they have agreed to. Rawls seeks to use an argument that the principles of justice are what would be agreed upon if people were in the hypothetical situation of the original position and that those principles have moral weight as a result of that. It is ahistorical in the sense that it is not supposed that the agreement has ever been, or indeed could ever have been, derived in the real world outside of carefully limited experimental exercises. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
