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Business
Ethics MGT610
VU
LESSON
11
JOHN
RAWLS' THEORY OF JUSTICE
John
Rawls' theory of justice as
fairness is an attempt to bring
many of these disparate
ideas
together
in a comprehensive way. According to
his theory, the distribution
of benefits and
burdens
in a society is just
if:
3.
Each person has an equal right to
the most extensive basic
liberties compatible
with
equal
liberties for all (the
principle of equal liberty); and
4.
Social and economic inequalities
are arranged so that they
are both:
c)
To the greatest benefit of
the least advantaged (the
difference principle), and
d)
Attached to offices and positions open
fairly and equally to all
(the
principle of
equal
opportunity).
Rawls
tells us that Principle 1 is
supposed to take priority
over Principle 2 should the
two of them
ever
come into conflict, and
within Principle 2, Part b
is
supposed to
take priority over Part
a.
Principle
1 is called the principle
of equal liberty. Essentially,
it says that each
citizen's
liberties
must be protected from
invasion by others and must be
equal to those of others. These
basic
liberties include the right
to vote, freedom of speech and conscience
and the other civil
liberties,
freedom to hold personal
property, and freedom from
arbitrary arrest. Part of
Principle
2
is called the difference
principle. It assumes
that a productive society will
incorporate
inequalities,
but it then asserts that
steps must be taken to
improve the position of the
most
needy
members of society, such as the
sick and the disabled, unless
such improvements
would
so
burden society that they
make everyone, including the
needy, worse off than
before. Part b
of
Principle 2 is called the
principle
of fair equality of opportunity.
It
says that everyone
should
be given an equal opportunity to
qualify for the more
privileged positions in
society's
institutions.
Therefore,
according to Rawls, a principle is
moral if it would be acceptable to a
group of
rational,
self-interested persons who
know they will live under it
themselves. This
incorporates
the
Kantian principles of reversibility and
universalizability, and treats people as ends and
not
as
means. Some critics of Rawls
point out, however, that
just because a group of people
would
be
willing to live under a
principle does not mean that
it is morally justified.
Two
final types of justice are
retributive and compensatory justice,
both of which deal
with
how
best to deal with wrongdoers.
Retributive
justice concerns
blaming or punishing those
who
do wrong; compensatory
justice concerns
restoring to a harmed person what he
lost when
someone
else wronged him.
Traditionally, theorists have
held that a person has a
moral
obligation
to compensate an injured party
only if three conditions
pertain:
1.
The action that inflicted
the injury was wrong or
negligent.
2.
The action was the real
cause of the injury.
3.
The person did the action
voluntarily.
The
most controversial forms of
compensation undoubtedly are
the preferential
treatment
programs
that attempt to remedy past
injustices against groups.
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Business
Ethics MGT610
VU
The
Ethics of Care
As
the Malden Mills fire and
rebuilding shows, there are
perspectives on ethics that are
not
explainable
from the point of view of
utilitarianism, rights, or Kantian
philosophy. The owner
had
no duty to rebuild (or to
pay his workers when
they were not working)
from any of these
perspectives;
still, he maintained that he had a
responsibility to his workers and to
his
community.
Rather than being impartial
(which all of these theories
maintain is crucial),
this
owner
treated his community and workers
partially.
This
is central to the point of
view known as the ethics
of care, an approach to
ethics that many
feminist
ethicists have recently advanced.
According to this method, we
have an obligation to
exercise
special care toward the people
with whom we have valuable,
close relationships.
Compassion,
concern, love, friendship, and
kindness are all sentiments
or virtues that
normally
manifest
this dimension of morality.
Thus, an ethic of care
emphasizes two moral
demands:
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