Summary
Title: Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
Author: John Rawls
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674005112
Pro:
• Helps strengthen his arguments, filling in holes in his original formulations
• Provides perhaps the most definitive statements on his ideas about justice
Con:
• Very dense and difficult, despite being aimed at readers unfamiliar with his first book
Description:
• Restatement of Rawls’ ideas from his famous book A Theory of Justice
• Corrects problems and addresses criticism of his main arguments
Some corrections appeared in a revised and updated version of A Theory of Justice. Other corrections appeared in various articles he wrote. Some of these corrections seemed to be at odds, however, which led to some confusion about what he was really arguing in the end. This led him to attempt to harmonize it all in a series of lectures at Harvard and Erin Kelly, an assistant professor of philosophy at Tufts University, used his lecture notes to construct the book Justice as Fairness: A Restatement.
The basic theme remains the same, in that Rawls continues to rely on his famous thought experiment: society’s institutions should be set up such that we would find the outcome fair and just even if we entered society without knowing in advance what our race, religion, or social class might be. We should consider the system just regardless of where in that system we find ourselves.
Of particular importance for Rawls in this book is the question of pluralism in society: if people differ on morality, religion, and philosophy, how can they live together in a single democratic society? Rawls argues that conformity on “comprehensive worldviews” can only be achieved by imposing it via a repressive state; therefore, significant pluralism must be accepted.
One consequence of this is the fact that we must all be willing to adjust the terms of our arguments about public policy in order to have productive conversations with each other. If our arguments are dependent heavily on a “comprehensive worldview” which others do not share and cannot be forced to accept, then I am essentially trying to impose my views on others. Instead of doing this, the public arguments I use for my position must be framed in a way that allows a broader segment of the population to accept — not just those who also accept by worldview.
Ralws’ original A Theory of Justice weighed in at over 500 pages; this book is less than half that. This should make Rawls’ ideas a bit more accessible to the average reader, which is one of Rawls’ main goals. He believes that citizens who live in a democratic society have a right as well as an obligation to participate in formulating the rationales behind their democratic institutions. His ideas are an attempt to describe the limits of those rationales — what works, and what is inappropriate.
To be quite honest, though, I doubt that most readers will be able to get much out of this text. Supposedly no familiarity with Rawls’ earlier works is necessary, but I would have had even more trouble if I hadn’t had some knowledge of his ideas and the criticisms which have been made. Some passages are more about moral philosophy than politics, resulting in even more dense and difficult reading. In the future people will probably rely most heavily on this book for the definitive statement of his political philosophy, but not everyone will find it easy to get through.
