Justice

• (Greek) Justice as harmony: a just society is one which everyone fulfills their roles so that society runs smoothly -> violating place in social order is unjust (even if its a place you don't want to be)
• Justice as equality: everyone should get the same kind and amount of stuff
• Needs-based justuce: everyone shouldn't get the same, because our needs aren't the same
• Merit-based justice: giving unequally based on what each person deserves
• Rawls - Justice as fairness: any inequalities in a social system should favour the least well-off, because this equalizes society

  • essential human rights: we are entitles to have basic needs fulfilled - negative and positive rights
• retributive justice: the only way to be satisfied is to make a wrongdoes suffer in proportion to the same way they made others suffer
• wellfare maximization: no good to be found in vindictively causing pain to wrongdoes but some form of punishment is still in order (ie. rehabilitation and detterence)
• restorative justice: amends over revenge
• "justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is to systems of thought."

  • the same way you would judge an idea beased off of how true it is, we should judge the legitimacy of our social institutions based on how just they are
• distributive justice:

  • people work togeather (society) -> "surplus value" (primary social goods) created from efficiency -> where does this surplus value get allocated, and how should it be distributed?
• primary social goods

  • income, power, wealth
  • rights, liberties, oppertunities
• inequalities should exist within a society

  • an inequality is just as long as its based on some sort of work or effort that somebody has put in
• original position:

  • veil of ignorance: not knowing anything about your life in this society when redesigning society - how would rational, impartial human beings create society
  • Maxamin rule: give the least advantaged the best situation possible in comparison to all other potential societies
• Rawls was not a fan of socialism, argued that it achieved equality at the expense of everyone
• Justice as fairness:

  • social and economic inequalities must be to everyones advantage
  • such social and economic inequalities must be attatched to positions that are equally open to all
  • protecting against a system with different classes
  • no position in society is reserved for a specific person or type of person
• 1. legal barriers
  2. birth status barriers
  3. talent and effort to excel barriers ** if this is the only inequality within a society than it is true equality of oppertunity
• difference principle: remove inequalities within a society as much as we can until the removal of further inequalities would cause harm to the least advantaged

  • efficiency principle: idea that we should find people in society that need help, and help them as much as we can until helping them would cause harm to someone else