shown that embarrassing a few unlucky individuals on a TV show
might make millions of viewers happy – thus achieving the happiness
of the greatest number – but few would feel sure that this was a ‘just’
proceeding. Nor is it easy (possible?) to compare people’s subjective
experience of ‘utility’. His method is to consider what principles
rational policy makers would adopt if they knew a great deal about
human nature and society, but had no idea of the role they
themselves played in it, or what goals they wished to pursue – what
he calls ‘a veil of ignorance’.
His conclusion is that two fundamental principles of justice would
emerge. First, each person is to have an equal right to the most
extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a
similar system of liberty for all. Second, social and economic liberties
are to be arranged so that they are both (a) to the greatest advantage
of the least advantaged and (b) attached to offices and positions open
to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. The first
principle has an absolute priority over the second. The logic of this is
that if we did not know what social positions we held, or what
objectives we were seeking to pursue, we would want to ensure that
any goals could be pursued by anyone and that none would be
victimised for the sake of the rest.
Rawls argues that this notion of justice accords with the common
intuitions that people have on the matter and offers a logical basis for
evaluating actual social orders. Gorovitz (1976: 286) argues that:
Such a view is plainly at odds with the rugged individualism of the
unconstrained free enterprise economy, and is equally at odds with the
highly controlled communist or socialist state that submerges indivi-
duals’ autonomy in the quest for social welfare.BOX 3.2 JUSTICE
CONCEPTS 59the harmony between the parts of society achieved by each fulfilling the
role for which they are most fitted: ‘... adherence to their own
business on the part of the industrious, the military and the guardian
classes, each of these doing its own work in the state is justice.’
(Plato, 1866: Book IV, para. 434)