John rawls said in A Theory of Justice that "justice is the primary virtue of the social organization system", while the social organization system is "an open system of rules, which stipulates positions and status, as well as their rights, obligations, powers and immunities." It is not difficult to see that there is an internal relationship between Rawls' theory of justice and rule theory. Rawls' rule theory can be said to be one of the angles to better understand his theory of justice, even if it is not the main basis of his theory of justice. In this paper, the concept of "rule" in Rawls' philosophy is roughly sorted out. On the one hand, its purpose is to better understand Rawls' rule theory itself, on the other hand, it is also to better understand some important features of Rawls' theory of justice and some important phenomena in China's current social life. In recent years, the word "rule" has appeared frequently in various occasions in China, and it can be said that it has become one of the key words in contemporary China social life.
First, "the rule view of practice mode" and "the general rule view"
The concept of "rules" has been mentioned in Rawls' doctoral thesis, but it comes from the published part of the doctoral thesis (topic? Quot Outline of Ethical Selection Procedure [195 1]), Rawls did not discuss this concept in detail, but said: "We can understand rules-rules contrary to principles-as maxims, which express the application of principles to some recognized and frequent occasions. Obeying rules, resorting to rules in daily life and defending these are just to show that rules are such a norm. Rawls first attracted academic attention with an article entitled "The Concept of Two Rules" (1955). In this article, Rawls analyzed two kinds of rules, namely two so-called "rule concepts". One of the concepts about rules seems to be his own point of view in the above paper-rules are the result of applying principles (mainly utilitarian principles in that article) to special situations:
It looks at the rules from the following aspects: we assume that everyone decides what he will do in a specific situation by applying the principle of utilitarianism; We also assume that different people will decide the same special situation in the same way, and situations similar to those previously decided will happen again. In this way, there will be such a situation: in the same situation, the same decision is either made by the same person at different times or made by different people at the same time. If a situation happens frequently enough, we suggest making a rule to cover it. four
Rawls called this view of rules "the summary view of rules", because this view regards rules as the summary of past decisions made by directly applying utilitarian principles to special cases. According to Rawls, this understanding of rules means "interpreting them as maxims and rules of experience". However, the theme of Rawls' article is precisely the criticism of this view of rules. Rawls has two main reasons.
First of all, this view of rules cannot explain people's definite expectations of each other's actions and how it is possible to cooperate with each other on this basis. Understanding a rule as a code of conduct based on past experience means that everyone is always qualified to reconsider the correctness of a rule in principle and question whether it is appropriate to abide by it under certain circumstances. The necessity of rules seems to lie in: otherwise, the application of utilitarian principles may be inefficient; In a reasonable utilitarian society, rules are unnecessary, because in that society, everyone has enough ability to directly apply utilitarian principles to specific cases. But the problem is that if everyone can determine what to do based on the principle of utility, it will often lead to confusion, and efforts to coordinate behavior by predicting how others will act are likely to fail.
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2 john rawls's concept of "rules" and its relevance to contemporary China context
Second, this "generalized view of rules" does not conform to people's usual understanding of social practices such as "punishment" and "promise". According to this view that rules are a summary of past experience, whether a person should keep his promise in a specific situation depends on the conclusion he draws by applying the utilitarian principle to this situation, that is, whether he thinks that keeping his promise in this situation will achieve the greatest goodness in general. But Rawls believes that this view obviously contradicts people's understanding of keeping promises and obligations. Because a promise that is not kept is not a promise at all-the rule of "keeping a promise" lies in the practice of "promise"; Making a promise means keeping it no matter what, unless some exceptions have been admitted directly or implicitly when making a promise.
Contrary to this "generalized view of rules", Rawls put forward what he called "the practice view of rules". Rawls wrote:
According to this view, rules are understood as a definition of practice. The characteristic of a practice is that teaching people how to engage in this practice means teaching people to master the rules that define this practice and resorting to these rules to correct the behavior of people engaged in this practice. Practitioners admit that those rules define this practice. Those rules can't be simply described as how people who engage in this practice actually behave: they can't simply say that they behave as if they are following those rules. Therefore, the rules are publicly known and understood, and have certainty, which is of fundamental significance to the concept of practice mode; It is also of fundamental significance that the rules of practice mode can be taught and used as the basis of action to form a coherent practice mode. According to this concept, rules are not a generalization of the individual's direct and independent application of utilitarian principles to the selection of specific situations that occur repeatedly. On the contrary, rules define a way of practice, and they are the main body of utilitarian principle. six
According to Rawls's "rule view of practice", among the rules that philosophers often talk about, only the so-called "constitutive rules" are the real rules, while the so-called "regulatory rules", 7 and "technical rules" and "practical guidelines" and ".
There are several fundamental differences between this rule concept and the "generalized rule concept". First of all, contrary to the general concept of rules, the rules of practice mode logically precede special situations. In other words, if there are no corresponding practical rules, a specific action will not be described as that kind of action at all. Take the baseball game as an example: many actions similar to those in baseball games can be played in other places, but only in baseball games can these actions be described as baseball actions.
Secondly, the concept of "rules of practice" provides a new point of view, that is, what right does everyone have to judge the appropriateness of observing rules in specific cases. If someone wants to carry out the activities stipulated in a certain practice mode, all he has to do is to abide by the rules of this practice mode, and he can't ask whether the rules of this practice mode are applicable to his situation. He can only question the practice itself, but not the specific actions under this practice. Or take baseball as an example: if the batter asks, "Can I play four balls?" People will think that he is asking what the rules are. If people tell him what the rules are, he still says that in this case, he thinks it is better to play four balls than three. People probably think that he is joking. You can also say that the baseball game will be better if you are allowed to play four balls instead of three. But you can't take the rules as a guide to what was the best thing in the past, and then ask them for their applicability as a special case.
Thirdly, according to this new concept of rules, the rules of practice mode are not a guide to help people judge special cases in the right way according to better ethical principles. The general concept of quasi-statistics and the concept of specific exceptions are not applicable to practical rules. A special case is not an exception to the practical method rule. On the contrary, exceptions are definitions or further interpretations of rules.
In Rawls' view, emphasizing the above differences between these two concepts of rules is to show that there are two basic forms of defending our behavior in ethics. These two forms can be regarded as answers to two different questions. For example, if a child asks his father why he put a person in prison, his father's answer may be that he robbed a bank somewhere. However, if the child further asks his father why he wants to build a prison to put some people in, his father's answer may be because he wants to protect good people and prevent bad people from bullying him. The question here is different: the former question uses proper nouns and mentions specific individuals, while the latter question does not contain proper nouns and does not mention specific individuals, but only involves a type or form of practice, or only involves an organizational system. The former question is the defense of individual action, which is answered by resorting to the rules of the practice mode to which this action belongs. The latter question is a defense of practice. To answer this question, we can't turn to the rules that define this practice, but must turn to some principle-in the concept of "two rules", this principle is the utilitarian principle. In other words, the utilitarian principle can not be directly used to defend individual actions, but can only be used to defend the practice or practice mode to which individual actions belong.
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3 john rawls's concept of "rules" and its relevance to contemporary China context
Second, is Rawls' rule theory a kind of rule utilitarianism?
Rawls' above viewpoint is very similar to the rule utilitarianism which is different from behavior utilitarianism in ethics. However, judging whether Rawls' viewpoint in The Concept of Two Rules is rule utilitarianism depends on how to understand it. Or take commitment as an example. According to behavioral utilitarianism, whether I should keep my promise under certain circumstances depends on whether the total utility brought by my keeping my promise is greater than that brought by my not keeping my promise. To this view, people can refute it like this: I should keep my promise even if breaking my promise will bring greater utility than keeping my promise under certain circumstances, because I know that if everyone does not keep his promise, the social system of keeping his promise will no longer exist, and the resulting utilitarian loss is far greater than the utilitarian increase brought by my breaking my promise this time. If we call the latter view as rule utilitarianism, then Rawls' view in The Concept of Two Rules is not rule utilitarianism. In that article, Rawls put forward the following views according to his exposition and interpretation of W.D. Ross's views, from which we can see what is the relationship between his views and utilitarianism.
First, Ross believes that no matter how great the value of keeping promises is, according to utilitarian reasons, one can imagine that a certain value is greater, and people can imagine that this value can be realized by breaking promises. Rawls believes that the value of Ross's view lies in pointing out that people can't defend the breach of promise by generally appealing to the effect: "Because the promisor doesn't have a universal utilitarian defense: it is not one of the various defense reasons allowed by the practical promise." nine
Secondly, Rawls agrees with Ross's view that the utilitarian rule view in the above sense overestimates the damage caused by not keeping promises to the promised organizational system. A person's bad faith will certainly damage his reputation, but it is not clear at a glance whether the damage caused by bad faith is big enough to explain the strictness of the obligation of keeping faith.
Thirdly, Rawls thinks it is more important to analyze an example similar to that put forward by Ross: a son made a separate promise to his dying father about the disposal of his estate. In this case, what kind of damage will be caused to the practice of the promise if you don't keep this promise has nothing to do with the son's consideration of whether to keep his promise to his father.
From these points, we can see that Rawls not only disapproves of directly using the utilitarian principle as the basis for defending a specific action, but also disapproves of indirectly defending a specific action under this practice mode by maintaining the utilitarian value of a practice mode. Rawls did emphasize that it is necessary to distinguish between defending practical methods with utilitarian principles and defending individual actions with utilitarian principles; He really believes that in cases like punishment and promise, only the defense of the former is reasonable. However, it cannot be simply said that Rawls' views here are utilitarian. Judging from his recognition of Ross's above views, Rawls' position in the concept of two rules can be said to be between utilitarianism and deontology. In other words, he successfully combined utilitarianism with deontology at that time-not only in the later theory of justice.
The function of utilitarianism is to arouse Rawls' attention to the social organization system as a practice mode and rule system, and to shift the focus of ethical research from human action to the social organization system in which people act. When Rawls said that the principle of utilitarianism can only be used to defend the practice mode defined by rules, but not to defend the specific actions under the practice mode, his interest lies not only in utilitarianism, but also in the question that he thinks classical utilitarians are actually most interested in-practice mode, social organization system or rule system. In the annotation of this article, Rawls wrote:
It is important not to forget that people I call classical utilitarianism are basically interested in the social system. They were major economists and political theorists at that time, and they were often reformers interested in practical affairs. Historically, utilitarianism is often accompanied by a coherent social view, which is not only an ethical theory, but also an effort to engage in philosophical analysis in the modern sense. The principle of utilitarianism is naturally regarded as the standard to judge the social organization system (practice mode) and the basis to promote reform. 10
However, Rawls also stressed that once utilitarianism is used to defend a practical way, the defense function of utilitarianism will no longer exist for specific actions under this practical way. Jin, a philosopher in China, also adopted a similar idea when demonstrating the role of utilitarianism or pragmatism in epistemology: the role of utilitarianism is the basis for choosing the "starting mode" of epistemology, and once the starting mode of epistemology is chosen according to utilitarianism-Jin believes that this starting mode can only be realistic-it is necessary to abandon utilitarianism and never continue to take utilitarianism as the criterion for evaluating the truth or falsehood of a particular proposition like pragmatism. Similarly, Rawls' thinking is that once we defend a practical mode with the principle of utilitarianism, the answer to the defense question of specific actions in this practical mode can only be appealed to the rules that define this practical mode-that is, the "constitutional rules" of this practical mode. Rawls wrote:
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4. john rawls's concept of "rules" and its relevance to contemporary China context.
In fact, the point of practice is to make people give up the qualification to act according to utilitarian considerations or various wise considerations, so as to fix the future and coordinate various plans. Having such a practical model-which makes it impossible for the promisor to generally resort to the utilitarian principle used to defend the practical model itself-has obvious utilitarian benefits. There is nothing contradictory or surprising in the following statement: when people argue that the present situation of chess and baseball is satisfactory, or that this kind of game should be modified in all aspects, it may be appropriate for people to put forward utilitarian (or aesthetic) reasons, but it is inappropriate to resort to these considerations when athletes of a sport put forward reasons for doing this action instead of that one? quot 1 1
In other words, it is necessary for a person to keep his promise, not because it will bring any utilitarian effect, but just because he is engaged in the practice of his promise. Keeping promises is the proper meaning of this practice. The color of deontology here is obvious.
This view will naturally lead to accusations that it means a conservative view: for everyone, the social practice of his society provides the only defense standard for his behavior. Rawls categorically denied this accusation, saying that his above views are not moral or social views, but only logical views. When an act is provided by practice, there is no other defense for a specific act of a specific person except resorting to this practice. But we can't infer whether we should accept the practice of our society. "People can take radical positions according to their own wishes, but where actions are defined by practical ways, the object of people's radicalism must be social practical ways and people's acceptance of these practical ways." 12
In the article "Justice as Fairness" published a few years later 13 and the book "A Theory of Justice" to be published nearly 20 years later, Rawls' position is indeed much more radical, and the object of this rather radical position is exactly the same. Quot social customs "and" people's acceptance of these customs ".
Third, from the theory of rules to the theory of justice: on the "principle of justice"
Let's take a look at Rawls' thinking on "social practice mode" in A Theory of Justice.
The whole work of A Theory of Justice can be regarded as Rawls' combination of deontology and effect theory in a new sense. Utilitarianism, as a social theory, focuses on the organizational system as a rule system, while deontology, as an ethical theory, focuses on individual rights and obligations. Both of them are different from the theory of virtue-one of the differences between utilitarianism and the theory of virtue is to attach importance to social establishment rather than just personal ethics, and one of the differences between deontology and virtue is to attach importance to rules rather than virtue. In Rawls' view, deontology must rise from the individual level to the social level, so that it can change from a moral theory about individual behavior to a just theory about social organization; Utilitarianism, on the other hand, must be supplemented by deontology. In this way, not only the utilitarian principle is the main defense reason for social establishment and people's acceptance of social establishment, but also the principle of fairness regards the utilitarian principle as an internal relationship. From these two aspects, we can see that Rawls' rule theory is closely related to his later justice theory.
In the first section of the second chapter of A Theory of Justice, Rawls made a quite systematic exposition on the issue of rules. His views can be summarized as follows.
First of all, the social organization system is a public rule system, which "determines positions and status, as well as their rights and responsibilities, powers and immunities." These rules stipulate that some forms of action are allowed and others are forbidden; In the case of violating the rules, they also stipulated some punishments and defenses. As examples of organizational systems-or, more broadly, social practice-we can think of games and ceremonies, trials and parliaments, markets and property systems. " 14
Secondly, it is said that there is an organizational system at a certain time and place, that is to say, those actions stipulated by this organizational system are all carried out as a routine, and at the same time, everyone knows that the rule system that defines this organizational system must be observed.
Thirdly, to say that this system of rules is public means that as long as these rules and people's participation in the activities stipulated in these rules are the result of consent, then everyone involved knows what he should know in this case. It is this that constitutes the certainty of mutual expectation between cooperative people.
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5. john rawls's concept of "rules" and its relevance to contemporary China context.
Fourthly, it is necessary to distinguish two rules of organizational system. One is the so-called "organization rule", which defines an organization system and determines its rights and obligations. The other is strategy or guideline, which involves what kind of permissible actions individuals and groups will choose according to their own interests, beliefs and speculations about each other's action plans.
Fifth, it is necessary to distinguish between a single rule (or a set of rules), an organizational system (or its main part) and the basic structure of the whole social system, because the justice or injustice of a single rule, an organizational system composed of rules and the whole social system composed of organizational systems do not correspond.
The above explanation of the concept of rules is the explanation of the concept of social organizational system; Among all social organizations, Rawls is mainly concerned with the basic structure of society, that is, the main political, economic and social systems of society. When Rawls explained the "constitution rules" of the social organization system in this sense, he enumerated such things as "generality" (which can be understood as the objects involved are all individuals in a class), "universality" (that is, they are understandable and should be observed by all participants) and openness (they should be extensive and open to participants). These are not different from Rawls' early views. However, Rawls' later views are completely different from his early views in the following two points: the principle of utility is no longer the basis of rules, but the principle of procedural fairness; The function of the principle of procedural justice is not only a special case that applies to this scope as a broader universal proposition, or just a general principle that provides defense reasons for rules in a specific scope, but also a formal feature of the selection procedure of the principle of justice as a basic social structure, and the fairness of this procedure is used to ensure the legitimacy of the principle of justice.
Here, we can see the combination of utilitarianism and deontology in Rawls' thought on two levels.
The first level is the procedure of choosing the principle of justice. According to Rawls, it is fair to choose the original state of the principle of justice, mainly because all parties are morally equal. 15 In this respect, as far as Rawls regards moral equality as the most basic value, Rawls' views can be included in the category of deontology. However, Rawls believes that all parties in the primitive state usually tend to choose more basic social goodness rather than less, and they should consider how to decide which view of justice is most beneficial to them. 16 from this perspective, the principle of utilitarianism can be said to be included in the principle of equality.
The second level is the selected two principles of justice. Among these two principles of justice, the first requires everyone to have the same freedom, tolerance, equality and freedom as others, and the second requires that social and economic inequality is based on the premise that the situation of the worst-off people is better in this model than in other alternative models. Rawls emphasized that the first principle takes precedence over the second principle, which means that the damage to the basic equality and freedom protected by the first principle cannot be defended or compensated with greater social and economic interests. In this respect, Rawls' view belongs to the category of deontology. But Rawls, after all, does not just talk about justice and efficiency; In the words of an article published in 1964, the most universal principle requires "establishing the most efficient judicial system". 17 Rawls clearly pointed out that the utilitarian principle is included in this principle. 18
Rawls' two principles of justice, as the constitutive rules of social organization system, can be regarded as the result of the application of the principle of "establishing the most efficient justice organization system". The relationship between the principle of 19 and the principle of justice is different from the relationship between the principle of procedural fairness or the principle of equality and the principle of justice as a characteristic of the original state. The relationship between the former can be said to be semantic-the principle can be said to be the preset of the rule and included in the rule; The latter relationship can be said to be pragmatic-in order to let the parties in the primitive state choose those two principles of justice, many assumptions need to be made about the characteristics of human nature and the environment of justice.
Although Rawls' views on the principles as the basis of rules in his later period are different from those in his earlier period, they are still completely consistent in this point: the defense of practice mode or social organization system and the defense of specific actions under this practice mode or social organization system are two different issues. As mentioned earlier, in his principle of "establishing the most efficient judicial system", justice is the first and efficiency is the second. This is only a manifestation of the deontological elements in Rawls' later thoughts. This deontology is also manifested in another point: for him, once the two principles of justice are derived from this principle, social actors can no longer use this principle, especially the utilitarian principle contained in it, as the basis for their opposition to the basic social structure defined by the two principles of justice. Besides justice, the values of cooperation, efficiency and stability all play a role in the process of choosing the basic structure of society. However, once two principles of justice are chosen, they can only become the basis of political activities, and without them, these values cannot be directly appealed. In Thomas Pogue's words, "those values that are the basis of Rawls' standard of justice have been fully accommodated and exhausted, so they can't be satisfied to a greater extent (logically), so they can't defend any violation of this organizational system, and this organizational system is also defended by those values. " 2 1
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6. john rawls's concept of "rules" and its relevance to contemporary China context.
Four. From the Theory of Rules to the Theory of Justice (Ⅱ): On the Principle of Fairness
The organizational system mentioned here is the basic structure of society, not the specific laws formulated in this basic structure-that is, the constitutional framework. In Rawls' theory, people have a natural obligation to abide by the principle of justice, and people have an obligation to abide by the laws formulated within the constitutional framework established according to the principle of justice. What is involved here is the aforementioned? Quot people's acceptance of these practices. " Rawls' answer to this question is more closely related to his rule theory.
Rawls believes that people in the primitive state should not only choose the principles related to social organizations, but also further choose the principles related to how individuals handle the relationship with social organizations after choosing the principles related to social organizations. The former leads to two principles of justice, while the latter leads to what he calls "the principle of fairness" 23 or "the principle of fair play" 24. The principle of fairness is the source of the so-called "obligation". Obligation is different from natural obligation. The difference between them is that the former is related to social establishment or social practice, while the latter is not necessarily related to specific social establishment or practice. The former is binding only when we voluntarily join an organization system, and the latter is binding whether we voluntarily or not; The former can only be attributed to individuals with specific roles, while the latter is applicable to people, regardless of their institutional ties. According to the principle of fairness, if an organizational system is just or fair, that is, it satisfies two principles of justice, then as long as a person voluntarily accepts the benefits of an organizational system or uses the opportunities it provides to pursue his interests, he has the responsibility to undertake the work stipulated by the rules of this organizational system. Rawls used this principle to explain the political obligation and the obligation to keep promises that apply to ordinary citizens.
As mentioned above, Rawls put forward in the concept of "two rules" that the defense of practical promise and practical promise should be one of them.