Question

·       Compare and contrast Rawls and Nozick on justice.

Answer 1

• John Rawls is one of the famous theorists ever acknowledged. He states firmly that everyone should view his state as that of ignorance. When an individual is under the veil of ignorance, he will be encouraged to learn more about how life is and how things work.
• He believes enables an individual to find his basic principles and those of the society. He needs us to be unaware of anything to enable us start from scratch.
• From this scratch and ignorance an individual produces the basic and fair principles and so does the whole society. Also, he states this will make everyone concerned about each other as the basic principles enhance equality and maintain equality.
• If his way succeeds, then the society can produce principles of justice that are fair and are not biased.
• Instead, Nozick thought otherwise and has been on the first row of criticism on John Rawls theories.For him, he believes poverty is necessary and is not a mistake since it comes deservedly.
• He states that poverty and unemployment should be a deserved outcome and success on the other hand should be a product of hard work and great talent. He also believes that failure of wealth distribution is advantageous to the wealth owner since he can for instance have the freedom to live where he wants unlike the poor who don’t have too many options of choosing where they are to stay.
• Nozick compares his historical, entitlement distribution of goods against “current time-slice” principles of distribution. He cites welfare economics as an example, a seeking of a fair “end-result” distribution.
• He finds looking at only our current situation to be unjust. Perhaps disadvantaged persons are getting their just desserts. To preserve justice in Nozick’s eyes, one must look at the whole historical accounting of things.