Group 5
Distributive
Justice
Distributive Justice
● Concerns what measurement should be allocate
society's resources.
● The idea of fair share.
● It includes issues like affirmative action,welfare,
free schooling and other goods and opportunities
and how society distributes them among its
members.
● Mainly deals with the distribution of resources.
● Concerns how claims and rights originated.
Answer the question: How fair is what I receive
for my work?
● people prefer equity (happy
when they get more in return)
● some prefer equality
(everybody should get the
same amount)
Aristotle classified justice into two types:
01
a) Distributive Justice
02
a) Corrective Justice
Distributive Justice
Distributive justice
Distributive justice as a concerns the socially just
concept that addresses allocation of resources.
the ownership of goods in Often contrasted with
a society. It assumes that just process, which is
there has to be a large concerned with the
amount of fairness in the administration of law,
distribution of goods.Equal distributive justice
works should provide concentrates on
individuals with an equal Distributive justice is absent outcomes. This subject
outcome in terms of goods when equal work does not has been given
acquired. produce equal outcomes or considerable attention in
when an individual acquired philosophy and the
a disproportionate amount social sciences.
of goods.
John Rawls provides an idea of distributive
justice
In his Theory of Justice, he provided two principles
of Distributive Justice:
1.The principle of equal basic
liberties:
This principle states that each
individual should have an equal right
to the most extensive basic liberties
compatible with a similar liberty for
others.
John Rawls provides an idea of distributive justice
2. The difference principle:
This principle states that social and
economic inequalities should be
arranged to benefit the least advantaged
members of society. In other words,
inequalities in income and wealth are
permissible as long as they work to the
advantage of the least well-off members
of society.
John Rawls provides an idea of distributive justice
Rawls argued that these two principles of justice
would be chosen by rational individuals
operating in the original position, a hypothetical
situation in which individuals do not know their
social status, natural abilities, or personal
preferences. According to Rawls, these
principles represent a fair and impartial way of
organizing society that respects the dignity and
worth of all individuals.
The “Thought Experiment”
● Rawls was interested in political philosophy. Thus he focused on
the basic institutions of society. Unless such institutions as the
constitution, economy, and education system operated in a fair
way for all, he argued, social justice would not exist in a society.
● Rawls set out to discover an impartial way to decide what the
best principles for a just society were. He reached back several
hundred years to philosophers like John Locke and Jean Jacques
Rousseau who had developed the idea of a social contract.
Justice as Fairness by John
Rawls
Justice as Fairness is achieved through a
thought of experiment which are the original
position and the veil of ignorance.
● Original positions agree on specific social
rules and institutions.
● Veil of ignorance is when individuals choose
the basic structure of society that they
thought is just. Rawl also added that through
the veil of ignorance, individuals can identify
beliefs about how society should be
organized.
The Original Position
Rawls presents the concept of an original position as a
hypothetical idea of how to establish "a fair procedure so
that any principles agreed on will be just. Rawls then
argues that procedural justice in the process of
negotiation will be possible via a nullification of
temptations for these people to exploit circumstances so
as to favor their own position in society.
Veil of Ignorance
This nullification of temptations is realized through a veil of ignorance,
which these people will be behind. The veil prevents the people from
knowing what particular preferences they will have by concealing their
talents, objectives, and, most importantly, where in society they
themselves will end up. The veil, on the other hand, does not conceal
general information about the society, and the people are assumed to
possess societal and economic knowledge beyond the personal level.
Thereby, such a veil creates an environment for negotiations where the
evaluation of the distribution of goods is based on general
considerations, regardless of place in society, rather than biased
considerations based on personal gains for specific citizen positions.
Making the Choice
● The fictional persons in the experiment, using their powers of reason and
logic, would first have to decide what most people in most societies want.
Rawls reasoned that rational human beings would choose four things,
which he called the "primary goods":
1 wealth and income 3 opportunities for
advancement
2 rights and liberties 4 self-respect
Basic Structure of a Society
Building a modern view on social contract theory, Rawls bases his work on an
idea of justice being rooted in the basic structure, constituting the fundamental
rules in society, which shape the social and economic institutions, as well as
the governance.
1 Aims to describe a just 3 Affects the lives of
arrangement of the major citizens.
political and social institutions
of a liberal society.
Distributes the main Is the source of basic
2 benefits and burdens 4 right opportunity for
of social life. work and specially
Morality.
Guiding Ideas of
Justice as Fairness
Positive Thesis Negative Thesis
Equality based reciprocity, unless When we are born differently,
unequal distribution would be to some are rich; some are poor.
everyone's advantage. In effect, Everyone is born in an unfair
equity would be based on the situation (which we don't
deserve). As such, inequality
needs of an individual.
should not be the basis of
service.
Principles of
Justice as Fairness
1. Each person has the same 2. Social and economic inequalities are to
indefectible claim to a fully satisfy two conditions:
adequate scheme of equal basic
liberties. Thus, the government a. Should be attached to offices and positions
should be the first to move for open to all under conditions of fair equality of
justice and fairness. opportunity; and
b. They are to be the greatest benefit of the
least-advantaged members of the society (the
difference principle).
These principles are lexically ordered: the first
principle has priority over the second; and in the
second principle the first part has priority over the
second part. For the specific question of
distributive justice, as opposed to the wider
question of political justice, it is the final stone in
the edifice that is crucial: this is the famous
difference principle.
Scope and Role of Distributive Principle
Distributive principles vary in numerous dimensions.
● They vary in what is considered relevant to distributive justice
(income, wealth, opportunities, jobs, welfare, utility, etc.); in the
nature of the recipients of the distribution (individual persons,
groups of persons, reference classes, etc.; and
● On what basis the distribution should be made (equality,
maximization, according to individual characteristics, according to
free transactions, etc.).
Scope and Role of Distributive Principle
In this entry, the focus is primarily on principles designed to
cover the distribution of benefits and burdens of economic activity
among individuals in a society. Although principles of this kind have
been the dominant source of Anglo-American debate about
distributive justice over the last six decades, there are other
important distributive justice questions, These include questions of
distributive justice at the global level rather than just at the national
level (see justice: international), distributive justice across
generations (see justice: intergenerational) and how the topic of
distributive justice can be approached, not as a set of principles but
as a virtue (see justice: as a virtue).
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