Review:
First of all what is justice? According to Wikipedia, justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, fairness, or equity. According to John Rawls, there are 2 principles of justice and the first principle concerns with equal basic liberties and the second principle involves the arrangement of social and economic inequalities. For him, “These are the principles that free and rational persons would accept in a hypothetical original position where there is a veil of ignorance hiding from the contractors all the particular facts about themselves.” He stated that the original agreement is the basic structure of the theory of justice. “The original agreement is the principles that free and rational persons concerned to further their own interest would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association.” According to a website, original agreement or position “is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. In taking up this point of view, we are to imagine ourselves in the position of free and equal persons who jointly agree upon and commit themselves to principles of social and political justice.” For short, John Rawls calls justice as fairness. Lastly, according to Rawls, justice as fairness has 2 parts. First is an interpretation of the initial situation and the second is a set of principles which would be agreed to.
Chapter 11: A Theory of Justice
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