What Is Justice?

by Thom Brooks – A Summary

Submitted by Manya Sharma (22BPHI002)

According to Thom Brooks, justice is about ideas regarding legitimate distributions of the things
we value.

There are varying perspectives on what must constitute, accurately, the principles of justice. In
order to understand that, we shall look at theories put forth in this regard by:
i. Jean Jacques Rousseau
ii. John Rawls
iii. Their critics (capability approach-ists, feminists, multiculturalists)

To offer legitimate solutions for the formation of a just society, Jean Jacques Rousseau builds on
the concept of the social contract. Some influential social contracts of our society include the
Magna Carta, USA’s Declaration of Independence and the Indian Constitution.

In Brooks’ words, the idea of a social contract creates duties binding on all contracting
individuals, fuelling their political obligation. The best-known defense for the social contract is
provided by Rousseau.

To defend the social contract, Rousseau begins by stating how every person is born free but gets
stuck in conflicts that arise between individuals living together in a community. To solve such
issues, he proposes that every individual cannot be allowed to provide his/her own solution to
such conflicts because then citizens might only pursue their private self-interests. Instead, there
must be an agreement forged among citizens wherein, ideally, everyone gets to satisfy their own
private interests. This is called the general will.

In order to accomplish this, Rousseau argued that each individual must accept a social contract
that abides by the general will. The general will functions as an appropriate tool to settle
conflicts since it is the shared substantive interest of every citizen in the community. In order to
minimize scope of error when trying to formulate the general will, one must ensure to separate
their private self-interest (i.e. the common will) from the general will that would be beneficial to
the substantial interest of all.

This social contract theory, supported by contractarians, also has its critics along the following
themes:

i. Obsolescence: just because a social contract was agreed to by citizens in the distant past,
it doesn’t bind the present citizens to consent to it too since they were not present at the
time of its formulation. The contract, therefore, has gone obsolete.

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 ii. Lack of formalization of consent: It is unclear as to how consent is granted to a social
contract – it could be granted through the form of an elaborate ceremony involving an
explicit declaration or it could also be implied in virtue of one’s mere presence in a
community.

iii. Hypothetical construct: The social contract theory is a hypothetical contract and not a
physical one which leads one to question its legitimacy and plausibility. It might also be
nothing more than a useful thought experiment.

According to Brooks, the most influential contemporary view of justice is defended by John
Rawls.

His theory of justice – called justice as fairness – asks us to imagine ourselves to be in the
original position, rectifying the critique of obsolescence in Rousseau's theory.

Rawls solves another challenge to Rousseau’s theory – the challenge of separating one’s private
interests from the general will – through proposing the idea of a veil of ignorance. The symbolic
‘veil’ doesn’t allow one to know of features about oneself that are morally arbitrary in nature,
such as age, gender or wealth and forces one to think carefully about the reasons for the
principles of justice endorsed.

There is an important condition that Rawls highlights for his theory to successfully prevail,
which is that the principles of justice endorsed must be decided unanimously since they are to be
binding on all. More precisely, they are to be binding on the basic structure comprising the
constitutional essentials of most states, such as their political institutions, the judiciary, etc.

Keeping the above-mentioned conditions in mind, Rawls argued that we would end up choosing
two principles of justice:

i. Each person has an indefensible claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic
liberties:
According to this principle, none should have more than the other and every citizen is
entitled to the same set of basic liberties. This principle holds primacy over the second
since it stands fundamental to the formation of a just society. It is only if a society does
enjoy equal liberties that socio-economic inequalities can become justified.

ii. Social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions:

a. They are to be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of
fair equality of opportunity:
Rawls claims that inequality associated with some members (such as the President
or the Prime Minister) of society enjoying more privileged opportunities than

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 others can be justified if everyone has the same set of basic liberties and equal
opportunities to hold those positions.

b. They are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society:

Here, Rawls refers to his difference principle which refers to the idea that
inequality is justified when it benefits the least advantaged members of society
(such as the poor). He defines the ‘least advantaged’ as people that are below a
certain ‘social minimum’ of rights and liberties.

Critics of these principles offered by Rawls are of the view that they may not come to conclude
with these two principles but rather:

i. One might choose a rejection of the idea of social minimum.

ii. One might approve more strongly of a redistributive system of economic justice.

John Rawls’ theory of justice attempts to resolve the problem of political instability through his
concept of political liberalism which refers to the ideas of public reason and overlapping
consensus.

Public reason is a reason that is public in the sense that it is available to all, irrespective of the
reasonable comprehensive doctrine (such as Kantianism, Hegelianism, Judaism, etc) that they
choose to support, aiding the problem of political instability. An example could be human dignity
– an idea that doesn’t require one to accept any one particular doctrine.

A non-public reason (such as endorsing euthanasia only because it stands reasonable to one
particular doctrine), for instance, would only appeal to one or a few such doctrines.

While coining reasonable comprehensive doctrines, he also rules out unreasonable

comprehensive doctrines, such as white supremacy or fascism. According to Rawls, what makes
these unreasonable is that they deny the citizens equality and also that their advocates hold that
these and only these ideas must dominate, negating all other ideas or schools of thought.

The problem of political instability stems from the idea that each individual might support a
different reasonable comprehensive doctrine than the other. This issue is related to political
justice because the members of one reasonable comprehensive doctrine might outnumber the
others and, consequently, come to dominate the decision-making process. Since this would be
unjust and undermine the equality of the citizens, Rawls wants to guard against this issue.

He also notes that all of the differences present among supporters of different reasonable
comprehensive doctrines are reasonable differences in the sense that while an individual might
prefer one doctrine over others, accepting any of them is reasonable. Therefore, we require a
method to accommodate all of these differences together while ensuring the equality of all
citizens. Rawls calls this idea reasonable pluralism and goes on to argue that every society is
characterized by such differences.

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Further, Rawls argues that public reasons must be used to forge an overlapping consensus. This
idea could resolve political instability in the following ways:

○ Forming a connection among different comprehensive doctrines would get the society
closer to securing political stability.
○ Since the reasons are accessible to all, the society would be able to achieve political
stability for the right reasons.
○ It would ensure that the political stability achieved doesn’t curtail citizens’ equality and
allows for reasonable pluralism.
○ No one comprehensive doctrine would dominate others.

Critics of overlapping consensus hold the following views:

i. Overlapping consensus is not required:

This claim argues that if political stability is to be achieved through forging a connection
with others, it could be accomplished through agreeing to the two principles of justice.
This view, accordingly, rejects the requirement of the overlapping consensus.

ii. Overlapping consensus is too fragile to secure political stability over time:
Advocates of this view propose that the public reasons that we stand for may not
command our substantial support. Instead, we might be supporting them only because
there isn’t a reason to actively disagree with them. It’s because of this fragile nature of the
concept of overlapping consensus that political stability cannot be secured through it.

In line with the criticisms proposed against John Rawls’ theories, other ideas to evaluate justice
include the capabilities approach, feminism, multiculturalism and the idea of political alienation
(with reference to the stakeholder society).

According to Brooks, capability is the ability to do or be with respect to something.

The approach, essentially, highlights one's relations with freedom and emphasizes that the state
must support its citizens’ capabilities such that the citizens are free to exercise – or not exercise –
their capabilities to do something.

This approach is defended by two major figures:

i. Amartya Sen:
He views capability as a continuum with a focus on increasing overall capability. He
argues that the best measure of well-being is capability and not distribution of resources.
This is unlike Rawls who understood socio-economic justice to be driven only by
distribution of resources rather than overall well-being. Sen goes on to propose that his
idea of capability should become a part of Rawls’ theory.

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 ii. Martha C Nussbaum:
Nussbaum argues for the presence of 10 non-competitive and irreplaceable capabilities,
making her approach a capabilities approach (unlike Sen’s capability approach) that
emphasizes the plurality of the capabilities that we have. She advocates that like Rawls’
idea of the social minimum, there must be a threshold for capabilities that would
guarantee a minimally decent life.

Nussbaum critiques Rawls’ theory by highlighting the assumptions associated with the
social contract theory – assumptions about the people that are party to them (such as the
assumption that they are able-bodied men). These assumptions, consequently,
disadvantage the minorities (such as women or people with learning disabilities),
rendering the society unequal. Therefore, she argues that we must discard the idea of
social contracts for determining justice and adopt the capabilities approach instead.

Another criticism offered against Rawls’ theories is the idea of feminism. A feminist view of
justice would highlight the potential inequalities between genders and suggest rectifications.
While all advocates of feminism base their ideas on the unequal power and equality dynamics
between men and women, there isn’t one feminism for all its supporters. Feminism is, rather, a
very diverse concept.

Largely, there are two leading groups of feminists –

i. Radical feminists: they focus on gender inequalities and how they are essentially
problematic.

ii. Liberal feminists: they, too, focus on gender inequalities but in a more liberal manner that
prioritizes the importance of individual freedom and consent.

Feminists are unsatisfied with Rawls’ theory of justice since while he argues for equal liberties
and equal opportunity in the public realm, he neglects the private altogether. This was so because
he believed that the family wasn’t a part of the basic structure.

It was Susan Okin who changed his mind on the issue by making the claim that the principles of
justice must apply to the family because the way a family operates impacts the publicly available
opportunities and lives of women. She later goes on to link feminism with the idea of
multiculturalism.

John Rawls’ theory of justice is based on the problem of differences fuelling political instability.
On the contrary, proponents of multiculturalism reject the notion of deeming differences to be a
problem to do away with. They, instead, argue that differences among groups can be
accommodated peacefully and rules can and should apply differently to people depending on the
groups they belong to.

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Okin relates feminism to multiculturalism and points out that the issues under the two often
coincide because feminism takes a multiculturalist position when it attempts to solve the
differences between men and women.

However, this stand is frequently deemed problematic by many feminists since many times the
rights claimed by multiculturalists turn out to be damaging for women. Permitting differences of
such a nature would render women unequal. In this way, multiculturalism often leads to further
domination of women by men. In response, Okin presents the view that multiculturalism is
acceptable only when it upholds gender equality.

The most revered supporter of multiculturalism is Bhikhu Parekh who holds that instead of
creating an overlapping consensus while rejecting the differences among groups, we must try to
discover principles that all might share in common – such as principles of respect, dignity and
equality. He adds that these common commitments must be connections that all might share and
must not be made with reference to certain groups since this would, again, render the society
unequal.

After presenting John Rawls’ theory of justice and its competing critical views of the capabilities
approach, feminism and multiculturalism, Thom Brooks sheds light on the concept of political
alienation and its relation with justice.

Political alienation refers to the idea of people having a conviction about their disconnection
from others in society. This leads people to believe that they do not have a stake in the society.

The issue here is the question of whether the creation of a just society is possible when certain
individuals feel alienated. Rousseau and Rawls wouldn’t view this as a legitimate problem for
the following reasons:

i. Rousseau: according to his ideas of the social contract, alienation of individuals is

inconsequential to the process of ensuring a just society.

ii. Rawls: according to his ideas of justice as fairness and political liberalism, justice shall
prevail in the society when the two principles of justice are practiced irrespective of
certain individuals feeling alienated.

When Rousseau referred to the concept of the social contract, he highlighted the idea of
individuals consenting to the contract, fuelling their political obligation in the society. However,
if an individual feels alienated, they feel that they don’t belong in that society and hence, are
convinced that they are not a stakeholder in the society. The question that Thom Brooks leaves
us with is whether an idea of justice (such as Rawls’ justice as fairness) needs to include an
element of belonging in order to constitute a just society.

*End of Document*

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