Paul Graham, Rawls ** 1/2

This book from the "Oneworld Thinkers" series is exactly what I was looking for: a survey of John Rawls' work with just the right level of detail, sympathetic explanation, and critical commentary. Unfortunately, it is not very well written and fails to develop many of the most tantalizing ideas.

Rawls is a philosopher best known for his 1971 book A Theory of Justice, which Graham characterizes as "one of the most influential books in moral and political philosophy published within the last one hundred years."

"Rawls changed the discipline of political philosophy...by changing its topic from a parochial concern with the meaning of moral terms to the framing of a 'big' question: what constitutes a fair distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation?" (p 6)

Rawls' theory has two aspects: a method for deriving the principles of a fair society and a claim about what principles would be derived by following that method. The essence of his method is to imagine people convening to decide on the rules their society will follow. Each person participates in the convention behind a "veil of ignorance" that prevents them from knowing what position they will have in society. The veil prevents participants from rigging the rules based on their self-interest.

Rawls claims that this method would lead to a pair of basic principles: equal opportunity for all; and the "difference principle," which says that any social or economic inequalities are to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society (pg 48). In other words, when equality fails (or is impossible), the rules of the society must favor the disadvantaged.

The difference principle is the obviously controversial part of the proposal. However, Rawls says it follows from a rigorous attention to the apparently uncontroversial idea of equal opportunity. For example, university graduates are socially advantaged, so you want the social good of university to be equally available to everyone. Not just technically available to everyone but actually available to everyone. Students from wealthier families make up a disproportionately large part of the student body, largely because they are better prepared. If you take equal opportunity seriously, you have to look at ways to compensate for the advantages that rich children have in preparing for university.

"When you try to pin down the concept [of equal opportunity] and establish what it requires in terms of redistribution, it becomes clear there is a continuum from a weak idea of equal access to favorable positions through a strong notion of state intervention in family life." (pg 54)

Rawls is serious about his egalitarianism. He rejects the idea that different people deserve more money or social resources because they are smarter or work harder:

"No one deserves his place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than one deserves one's initial starting point in society. The assertion that a man deserves a superior character that enables him to make the effort to cultivate his abilities is equally problematic: for his character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which he can claim no credit." (Rawls, quoted on page 57)

"Desert is tied to effort: we get something if we do something. Rawls argues that we are not responsible for our 'natural endowment' — strength, looks, intelligence and even good character — and so we cannot claim the product generated by that natural endowment. Under the difference principle one person may earn fifty units and another fifteen units, but not one unit of that thirty-five unit difference is justified by reference to desert." (p 75)

Now that is thought-provoking! Most people want success to be based on the choices a person makes and not on factors outside of their control. Rawls' radical notion illlustrates how hard it can be to tell the difference between the two.

The biggest problem I had with Graham's book is that his prose always remains abstract. He doesn't provide many concrete examples to explicate Rawls' abstract concepts. For example, Graham criticizes Rawls for a "failure to provide an adequate account of how people come to value things, such as a way of life or personal relationships." (p 88) That sounds like a valid criticism and an interesting idea, but I'm not certain I understand what he is getting at. Other important underdeveloped areas are Rawls' distinction between "rational" and "reasonable." the nature of human autonomy, the question of whether human beings are fundamentally free and equal (as opposed to a natural aristocracy based on native endowments; cf pg 58), and the relative priority of the right and the good.