Justice as fairness or justice as capabilities? John Rawls vs Amartya Sen
This article sets out some of the key concepts found in Justice as Fairness, a theory of justice propounded by John Rawls, and then presents Amartya Sen’s account for justice to discuss to what extent it may constitute a response to Rawls’s theory.
Rawls and Sen share similar views about utilitarianism in the sense that they both take a dim view of proposing such a system that aims to stimulate the welfare or happiness of the greatest number. However, they visibly differ in their methodologies used in refuting the utilitarian argument. Justice as fairness is an exemplar of a liberal political conception of justice through which Rawls construes the most fundamental ideas implicit in the public political culture of a liberal democratic society. He describes the organisation of the major political, social and economic institutions; the legal apparatus, the market, the family, and the political order, which constitute the framework of this society as the ‘basic structure’.
Rawls postulates that citizens of such a society dwell on the question of what sort of basic structure will be fair. He assumes that these people live under propitious conditions in which the resources are enough for all to satisfy their basic needs. Rawls also emphasises that these citizens are free and equal, that is, they enjoy certain ‘primary goods’ such as rights and liberties in the same manner and they are minded to spend their lives within ‘a system of fair cooperation for mutual advantage’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 56). It may be useful to shed some light on what it means to be free for people in Rawls’s account. It means that they regard themselves as ‘self-originating sources of valid claims’ as well as ‘capable beings who bear responsibilities for their ends and have a conception of the good’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 65).
Rawls underlines that people are not only free and equal but also reasonable and rational. Thanks to the former, they have the capacity for a sense of justice (Rawls, 1998, p. 60), meaning that they are capable of confirming fair terms of collaboration even when it is hardly in their interests, given the premise that others are also eager to act as such. As a consequence of their rationality, they also have the capacity for ‘conception of the good’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 60), which allows them to pursue their judgement regarding what is valuable in life. Rawls puts that as far as they have these two ‘moral powers’ to a sufficient degree, enabling them to cooperate within society (Rawls, 1998, p. 60), they are considered free and equal.
Rawls sets out two principles of justice that apply to different parts of the basic structure as a guideline: the principle of Equality and the principle of Difference. The first principle requires that ‘each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with a similar scheme for all’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 56). The second principle asserts that social and economic inequalities must meet the following requirements: ‘they must first be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity and secondly be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 56).
It is important to note that Rawls acknowledges the possibility of these principles contradicting one another. To overcome this problem, he introduces a certain lexical priority that enables the realisation of the former principle to take precedence over the latter and the same applies to the two requirements of the latter principle respectively. This insinuates that the equality of certain primary goods is not to be overruled by others. For instance, the institutions themselves in the basic structure grow into a system of rules, which define social positions and offices with the rights, immunities and powers attributed to them. However, the basic rights and liberties are invariably considered as far more important than the power of offices and positions of responsibility, one’s income or self-respect. Rawls holds that these two principles would be unanimously designated through an impartial process of decision-making.
In line with this view, Rawls introduces ‘the original position’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 61) to elaborate on the aforementioned idea of social cooperation and how it may be determined in fair terms. He imagines people in a hypothetical situation where they are constrained by the ‘veil of ignorance’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 62). While people have existing knowledge about the comprehensive elements of social life and common sense, for instance, they are aware of a moderate scarcity of resources as well as people’s diverse beliefs, tastes and plans of life, this figurative veil deprives them of the knowledge about people’s race, ethnicity, wealth along with class structure, political attitude or levels of the economic prosperity of the actual society. Because citizens do not know the conditions under which they will be placed, whether healthy or disabled, well-off or impoverished, it is hence convenient for each one to pursue a contract that enlarges the prospects of the least advantaged whereby certain inequalities may be allowed only if they work to the benefit of the worst-off. Such an arrangement would then guarantee everyone a safe place in this future society.
Once the veil is lifted and people are no longer in their original position, Rawls believes that the contract should prevail based on mutual respect along with what he views as the most desirable form of social stability, that is, ‘an overlapping consensus’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 69). Rawls believes that this type of consensus is paramount for ‘a society marked by deep divisions between opposing and incommensurable conceptions of the good’ (Rawls, 1998, p. 71) because it paves the way for all reasonable comprehensive doctrines to affirm all kinds of political conceptions of justice, each from within its vantage point.
Due to its emphasis on an impeccable form of justice, Rawls’s method of theorising, namely ‘transcendental institutionalism’, competes with Sen’s ‘realisation-focused comparative approach’. Sen stresses the significance of realisations and outcomes as contrasted with an interpersonal agreement central to Rawls’s account. Similar to earlier theories of the social contract, Rawls stresses certain prerequisites, such as a perfect agreement. Sen discusses this concerning the hypothetical original position and argues that the idea of a perfect agreement amongst citizens of a society whose boundaries are clearly defined is highly problematic given the conditions of modern complex societies where multifaceted, cogent and conflicting demands of large groups of people lie.
Besides, Sen stresses that when such an agreement is used to define real institutions in the legislative stage, people’s actual behaviour is under-estimated in Rawls’s theory. In addition, Sen argues that an extensive focus on identifying the ‘just’ does not necessarily reveal how injustices can be identified and reduced in the present day and the conceptualisation of justice should not be so indifferent to the experiences of actual people. He asserts that even though it might not be entirely plausible to agree on just institutions, a comparative approach provides an alternative for a widespread consensus on the injustices. Ultimately, he finds that such a transcendental method encounters two great difficulties: feasibility and redundancy.
Furthermore, Sen deduces certain flaws in Rawls’s approach to justice, for instance, the priority he gives to certain rights and liberties and concentrates on more substantive freedoms of the individuals by emphasizing ‘the capabilities of people to do things that they have reason to value’ (Sen, 1999, p. 85). In Development as Freedom, he asks ‘Why should the status of intense economic needs, which can be matters of life and death, be lower than that of personal liberties?’ (Sen, 1999, p. 64) thus challenging the absolute priority of certain rights and liberties that Rawls sets forth.
This challenge is all the more explicit when he states that ‘even gigantic famines can result without anyone’s libertarian rights being violated’ (Sen, 1999, p. 66). Therefore, Sen argues that rather than focusing on primary goods, particularly rights and liberties but also income and wealth, as the metric of justice, it is more important to take into account how one has the capability of converting those primary goods into a much better form of promoting one’s ends (Sen, 1999, p. 74).
To put it more simply, the real issue is not the absence of the food itself but whether people have adequate access to food or not, which is illustrated through the example of fasting (Sen, 1999, p. 76). Sen puts that capability refers to what people can be and do instead of what they possess or how they feel. Using the capability approach in the context of comparatively assessing the well-being of a person, Sen expresses that a disabled person can achieve far less than an able-bodied person who has the same primary goods (Sen, 1999, p. 74). In his analysis of poverty, he thus considers poverty as a deprivation of capabilities rather than a mere lack of income.
Sen argues that ‘the broadening of the informational base from income to the basic capabilities enriches our understanding of inequality and poverty in quite radical ways’ (Sen, 1999, p. 97). Whether his work constitutes a response to that of Rawls is not a straightforward answer. Comparing the two is at times proved highly difficult because the former theory of justice is an ‘ideal type’ in contrast to the latter’s comparative approach. Hence, their scope and theoretical endeavours are not the same, however, a more substantial comparison of the two might be possible if each of them is further elaborated in such a way to develop justice as fairness for non-ideal situations while strengthening the theoretical basis of the capability approach.
Works Cited
Rawls, J. (1998). Justice as Fairness in Liberal Polity. In G. Safhir, The Citizenship Debates: A Reader (pp. 53–72). Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
