Rawls argues that the task of social and political institutions is the
preservation and enhancement of individual liberty and well-being.
Rawls tries to develop a procedure that would yield principles of
justice. These principles of justice would then serve as guides in the
constuction and evaluation of social and political institutions.
In Rawls's view, questions of justice arise when a society evaluates
the institutions and practices under which it lives with an eye toward
balancing the legitimate competing interests and conflicting claims
which are pressed by the members of that society. If we adopt the
language of rights, we can say that Rawls sees problems of justice
arising when legitimate rights claims come into conflict. Rawls does
not view the citizens of a state as naive moralists searching for a
Utopian ideal. Rather, they are sufficiently self-interested to wish
to pursue their own individual interests and achieve their own
individual goals. Given inevitable competing interests and conflicts,
Rawls's task is to attempt to provide a procedure that will enable the
members of the society to adopt principles for resolving the conflicts
and for adopting just practices and institutions. In other words his
question is this: By what procedure can self-interested persons with
legitimate competing claims adopt principles for just institutions and
practices?
Rawls's answer is to appeal to a contract process constrained by
certain assumptions. Several of the more important assumptions include
the following: (1) that human cooperation is both possible and
necessary; (2) that the contractees adhere to the principles of
rational choice; (3) that all contractees desire certain primary goods
that can be broadly characterized as rights and liberties,
opportunities and powers, income and wealth-in other words, general
goods that are necessary to the attainment of any other individual
goods persons may desire; (4) that the contract process be constrained
by a minimal morality which stipulates that principles adopted by the
contractees be general, universal in application, public, and the
final court of appeal for ordering the conflicting claims of moral
persons; (5) that the parties to the contract are capable of a sense
of justice and will adhere to the principles adopted.
The Individual & the Poliical Order
An Introduction to Social & Political Philosophy
-Norman E. Bowie & Robert L. Simon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0847687805/
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