RAWLS’ THEORY OF JUSTICE: AN ANALYSIS

John Rawls was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition whose theory of justice led to the revival of interest in political philosophy in modern times.In his celebrated work, A Theory of Justice, he asserted that a good society is characterised by a number of virtues.Justice is the first virtue of a good society.Though a seminal work in the discipline of Political Science, Rawls' theory has been criticised by various schools of thought.This paper makes an attempt to briefly study the theory of justice and make a critical analysis of the same.On a closer analysis, the diverse criticisms of Rawls' theory seem to be based on biased interpretations of his theory.In fact Rawls has tried to combine different value systems in order to arrive at his theory of justice.Some tenets of these value systems are thought to be mutually incompatible with each other.Indeed Rawls' theory of justice represents the convergence of libertarianism, egalitarianism and communitarianism. I. JOHN RAWLS: AN INTRODUCTION JohnRawls was an American political philosopher in the liberal tradition whose theory of justice led to the revival of interest in political philosophy in modern times.Rawls himself developed his thinking in the liberal tradition, and followed the methodology of social contract-particularly John Locke's version of the theory-to arrive at the principles of justice.His theory of justice as fairness envisions a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights cooperating within an egalitarian economic system.His account of political liberalism addresses the legitimate use of political power in a democracy, aiming to show how enduring unity may be achieved despite the diversity of worldviews that free institutions allow.His writings on the law of peoples extend these theories to liberal foreign policy, with the goal of imagining how a peaceful and tolerant international order might be possible. II.THEORY OF JUSTICE John Rawls in his celebrated work A Theory of Justice asserted that a good society is characterised by a number of virtues.Justice is the first virtue of a good society.In other words, justice is necessary but not a sufficient condition of a good society.Those who argue that justice should not be allowed to come into the way of social advancement and progress run the risk of causing the moral degradation of society.In a just society, justice is established as the foundation of the social structure.Hence all political and legislative decisions should be designed to fulfill the requirements of justice. III.OBJECTIVE In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues for a principled reconciliation of liberty and equality.Central to this effort is an account of the circumstances of justice, inspired by David Hume, and a fair choice situation for parties facing such circumstances, similar to some of Immanuel Kant's views.Principles of justice are sought to guide the conduct of the parties.These parties are recognized to face moderate scarcity, and they are neither naturally altruistic nor purely egoistic.They have ends which they seek to advance, but prefer to advance them through cooperation with others on mutually acceptable terms.Rawls offers a model of a fair choice situation (the original position with its veil of ignorance) within which parties would hypothetically choose mutually acceptable principles of justice.Under such constraints, Rawls believes that parties would find his favoured principles of justice to be especially attractive, winning out over varied alternatives, including utilitarian and right- libertarian accounts.