A theory of Justice: Revised Edition

The Methods of Ethics,
Appendix, “The Kantian Conception of Free Will” (reprinted from
Mind,
vol. 13, 1888), pp. 511–516, esp. p. 516.
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tion is required to meet Sidgwick’s objection. My suggestion is that we
think of the original position as in important ways similar to the point
of view from which noumenal selves see the world. The parties qua
noumenal selves have complete freedom to choose whatever principles
they wish; but they also have a desire to express their nature as rational
and equal members of the intelligible realm with precisely this liberty to
choose, that is, as beings who can look at the world in this way and
express this perspective in their life as members of society. They must
decide, then, which principles when consciously followed and acted upon
in everyday life will best manifest this freedom in their community, most
fully reveal their independence from natural contingencies and social
accident. Now if the argument of the contract doctrine is correct, these
principles are indeed those defining the moral law, or more exactly, the
principles of justice for institutions and individuals. The description of
the original position resembles the point of view of noumenal selves, of
what it means to be a free and equal rational being. Our nature as such
beings is displayed when we act from the principles we would choose
when this nature is reflected in the conditions determining the choice.
Thus men exhibit their freedom, their independence from the contingen-
cies of nature and society, by acting in ways they would acknowledge in
the original position.
Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from
the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and
equal rational beings with a liberty to choose. It is for this reason, I
believe, that Kant speaks of the failure to act on the moral law as giving
rise to shame and not to feelings of guilt. And this is appropriate, since for
him acting unjustly is acting in a manner that fails to express our nature
as a free and equal rational being. Such actions therefore strike at our
self-respect, our sense of our own worth, and the experience of this loss is
shame (§67). We have acted as though we belonged to a lower order, as
though we were a creature whose first principles are decided by natural
contingencies. Those who think of Kant’s moral doctrine as one of law
and guilt badly misunderstand him. Kant’s main aim is to deepen and to
justify Rousseau’s idea that liberty is acting in accordance with a law that
we give to ourselves. And this leads not to a morality of austere command
but to an ethic of mutual respect and self-esteem.
32
32. See B. A. O. Williams, “The Idea of Equality,” in 
Philosophy, Politics and Society,
Second
Series, ed. Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1962), pp. 115f. For confir-
mation of this interpretation, see Kant’s remarks on moral education in 
The Critique of Practical
Reason,
pt. II. See also Beck, 
A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason,
pp. 233–236.
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The original position may be viewed, then, as a procedural interpreta-
tion of Kant’s conception of autonomy and the categorical imperative
within the framework of an empirical theory. The principles regulative of
the kingdom of ends are those that would be chosen in this position, and
the description of this situation enables us to explain the sense in which
acting from these principles expresses our nature as free and equal ra-
tional persons. No longer are these notions purely transcendent and lack-
ing explicable connections with human conduct, for the procedural con-
ception of the original position allows us to make these ties. Of course, I
have departed from Kant’s views in several respects. I cannot discuss
these matters here; but two points should be noted. The person’s choice as
a noumenal self I have assumed to be a collective one. The force of the
self’s being equal is that the principles chosen must be acceptable to other
selves. Since all are similarly free and rational, each must have an equal
say in adopting the public principles of the ethical commonwealth. This
means that as noumenal selves, everyone is to consent to these principles.
Unless the scoundrel’s principles would be agreed to, they cannot express
this free choice, however much a single self might be of a mind to adopt
them. Later I shall try to define a clear sense in which this unanimous
agreement is best expressive of the nature of even a single self (§85). It in
no way overrides a person’s interests as the collective nature of the choice
might seem to imply. But I leave this aside for the present.
Secondly, I have assumed all along that the parties know that they are
subject to the conditions of human life. Being in the circumstances of
justice, they are situated in the world with other men who likewise face
limitations of moderate scarcity and competing claims. Human freedom
is to be regulated by principles chosen in the light of these natural restric-
tions. Thus justice as fairness is a theory of human justice and among its
premises are the elementary facts about persons and their place in nature.
The freedom of pure intelligences not subject to these constraints (God
and the angels) are outside the range of the theory. Kant may have meant
his doctrine to apply to all rational beings as such and therefore that
men’s social situation in the world is to have no role in determining the
first principles of justice. If so, this is another difference between justice
as fairness and Kant’s theory.
But the Kantian interpretation is not intended as an interpretation of
Kant’s actual doctrine but rather of justice as fairness. Kant’s view is
marked by a number of deep dualisms, in particular, the dualism between
the necessary and the contingent, form and content, reason and desire,
and noumena and phenomena. To abandon these dualisms as he under-
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stood them is, for many, to abandon what is distinctive in his theory. I
believe otherwise. His moral conception has a characteristic structure that
is more clearly discernible when these dualisms are not taken in the sense
he gave them but recast and their moral force reformulated within the
scope of an empirical theory. What I have called the Kantian interpreta-
tion indicates how this can be done.
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CHAPTER V. DISTRIBUTIVE SHARES
In this chapter I take up the second principle of justice and describe an
arrangement of institutions that fulfills its requirements within the setting
of a modern state. I begin by noting that the principles of justice may
serve as part of a doctrine of political economy. The utilitarian tradition
has stressed this application and we must see how they fare in this regard.
I also emphasize that these principles have embedded in them a certain
ideal of social institutions, and this fact will be of importance when we
consider the values of community in Part Three. As a preparation for
subsequent discussions, there are some brief comments on economic
systems, the role of markets, and the like. Then I turn to the difficult
problem of saving and justice between generations. The essentials are put
together in an intuitive way, followed by some remarks devoted to the
question of time preference and to some further cases of priority. After
this I try to show that the account of distributive shares can explain the
place of the common sense precepts of justice. I also examine perfection-
ism and intuitionism as theories of distributive justice, thus rounding out
to some degree the contrast with other traditional views. Throughout the
choice between a private-property economy and socialism is left open;
from the standpoint of the theory of justice alone, various basic structures
would appear to satisfy its principles.
41. THE CONCEPT OF JUSTICE IN POLITICAL ECONOMY
41. Justice in Political Economy
My aim in this chapter is to see how the two principles work out as a
conception of political economy, that is, as standards by which to assess
economic arrangements and policies, and their background institutions.
(Welfare economics is often defined in the same way.
1
I do not use this
1. Welfare economics is so defined by K. J. Arrow and Tibor Scitovsky in their introduction to
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name because the term “welfare” suggests that the implicit moral concep-
tion is utilitarian; the phrase “social choice” is far better although I
believe its connotations are still too narrow.) A doctrine of political econ-
omy must include an interpretation of the public good which is based on
a conception of justice. It is to guide the reflections of the citizen when he
considers questions of economic and social policy. He is to take up the
perspective of the constitutional convention or the legislative stage and
ascertain how the principles of justice apply. A political opinion concerns
what advances the good of the body politic as a whole and invokes some
criterion for the just division of social advantages.
From the beginning I have stressed that justice as fairness applies to
the basic structure of society. It is a conception for ranking social forms
viewed as closed systems. Some decision concerning these background
arrangements is fundamental and cannot be avoided. In fact, the cumula-
tive effect of social and economic legislation is to specify the basic
structure. Moreover, the social system shapes the wants and aspirations
that its citizens come to have. It determines in part the sort of persons
they want to be as well as the sort of persons they are. Thus an economic
system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and
needs but a way of creating and fashioning wants in the future. How men
work together now to satisfy their present desires affects the desires they
will have later on, the kind of persons they will be. These matters are, of
course, perfectly obvious and have always been recognized. They were
stressed by economists as different as Marshall and Marx.
2
Since eco-
nomic arrangements have these effects, and indeed must do so, the choice
of these institutions involves some view of human good and of the design
of institutions to realize it. This choice must, therefore, be made on moral
and political as well as on economic grounds. Considerations of effi-
ciency are but one basis of decision and often relatively minor at that. Of
course, this decision may not be openly faced; it may be made by default.
We often acquiesce without thinking in the moral and political conception
implicit in the status quo, or leave things to be settled by how contending
social and economic forces happen to work themselves out. But political