Reconciling Nozick and Rawls with our Intuitions about Justice

By
I am torn between these two accounts of distributive justice, particularly when considering the claims of an individual against the needs of an institution or social structure in maintaining justice. First, Nozick’s account felt intuitive upon the first read. Almost similar to how Rawls outlined that in the original position if we establish a just procedure, the outcomes that flow from it will be just, Nozick is arguing that “whatever arises from a just situation by just steps is itself just” (151). If done through the agreed-upon means of legitimate and voluntary exchange, then any distribution of holdings is just and should remain untouched. To govern otherwise and distribute or restrain would sacrifice a large amount of liberty. Therefore, there should be a minimal state, and we should avoid any patterned theories of distribution and instead rely upon the principle of entitlement. This approach would be driven by the mantra “from each as they choose, to each as they are chosen” instead of “to each according to his X.” 

The basketball example resonated most with me from Nozick’s argument in his critique of patterned theories. We start with a just distribution, and Chamberlain plays many games for which people willingly pay to watch. Then, Chamberlain ultimately ends up with millions more dollars than all of them; our intuition tells us that this new distribution is not unjust, despite the inequality. This is because it came from voluntary and just exchanges based on perceived value. If we were to preserve a pattern, like Rawls, the state would have to constantly interfere and reorder to preserve the pattern that it perceives as just. If Chamberlain were forced to redistribute, then those earnings, and that time and effort, would, in effect, become akin to “forced labor” for the state or the needy.

However, I believe our conception of justice goes beyond this. We don’t think simply in terms of just procedure but also in terms of background justice, societal inequalities, and the dignity of individuals within that society. It is obvious that liberty is inextricably linked to economic position. Those less privileged by their arbitrary position assigned at birth should not have fewer chances to exercise their liberties or pursue their aims. As Rawls describes, these inherited conditions and natural assets are “morally arbitrary” and undeserved, meaning no one deserves to be born rich or poor or as a man or a woman. Similar to how we implement rules in games to avoid major inequalities or odds of success, we must support fair equality of opportunity and the two principles by adopting pure adjusted procedural justice. These adjustments secure the idea of society as a fair system of social cooperation over time and are required by the principles of justice, not foreign to them.

From all of this, I am curious about how these philosophers, particularly Rawls, would interpret reparations. Would he consider them under the lens of distributive justice or corrective justice, and what would be the process of adjustment that would yield the most justice?

Comments

  1. Paul HurleyMarch 9, 2023 at 12:23 PM

    It IS important to feel at least the apparent force of each view. Notice that Nozick's is for Marx the epitomy of the constitutional liberal state -- using all of the state's power to enforce the right to property, and in a way that justifies radically unequal property holdings. If Marx is right, you SHOULD feel the force of the ideological rationale for such a position.

    One interesting question is whether Rawls would agree with you and Nozick that his is a patterned account. Nozick has the Proviso as a condition that justice places on legitimate acquisition, which may require periodic redistribution; Rawls has the Two Principles as conditions that justice places on legitimate acquisition, which will require periodic distribution. Are they really on opposite sides of Nozick's divide, or are they on a continuum of options on the same side?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Livia: Táíwò and Economic Success in the Global South

By
  Reconsidering Reparations by Professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò illuminates the large extent to which racism and colonialism played in creating the current global economic structure, in which the global north dominates the global south. Additionally, this book highlights how current policies implemented by global institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank have further strengthened and reaffirmed this positioning. Taking into account this global historical perspective, we can better understand how “consequences flow from some other parts of the world to other parts, often across national borders, and in ways that complicate geographically and politically narrow ways of thinking about reparations” (24). Thus, some sort of international obligation of social justice must be exist. Táíwò’s emphasis on the role that slavery and colonialism played in establishing the current economic order makes me think about the signal which this sends to the Global South in the development of their p...
Read more

Carlos: Response to Henry's Conclusion

By
I've spent way too long trying to argue against Henry's point because it just seems wrong to conclude with "there is no current social framework by which we might call their lasting effects socially unjust–at least under the political conception of justice". Yet, the more I thought about it, the more I felt I had to agree with Henry's argument regardless of how strange it felt to do so. Still, I did have a few ideas as I was thinking of how to refute Henry's conclusion: -------------------------------------------- 1) With the hypothetical situation Henry provides, if we were to fully extend its logic to our current world, I think Prof. Hurley would have also created a division between the A and B group that would have maintained even into Tuesday. I think were that division were to have taken place, even after Prof. Hurley disbanded the government, the division would have remained and the hierarchy of power would continue into the rest of the week. It seems fa...
Read more

Smith, Locke, Harris, and Justice

By
 On page 79, Smith writes, "the violation of justice is injury: it does real and positive hurt to some particular persons," and thus it is a virtue that, unlike beneficence, warrants resentment if we fail to fulfill it. Upon reading this, I immediately thought, well how are you defining justice?  It became very clear in the following pages that Smith's conception of justice is nearly identical to Locke's Law of Nature. On page 80, he writes, "Among equals each individual is naturally, and antecedent to the institution of civil government , regarded as having a right both to defend himself from injuries, and to exact a certain degree of punishment for those which have been done to them." He continues to say that justice is only those transgressions which spectators would have the right to, and would be compelled to, punish whoever commits them. After this, he explains that no one has a right to advance their own happiness at the expense of someone else's...
Read more