John rawls, a professor at Harvard University in the United States, published A Theory of Justice in 197 1, which aroused widespread concern in western countries and was regarded as one of the most important works in western political philosophy, law and moral philosophy after the Second World War. After the book was published, it caused a heated discussion and was listed as one of the required books for many university courses. There are countless arguments or discussion articles caused by this. Robert Dahl, a famous American political scholar, said: Rawls' works were immediately recognized as a fundamental contribution to political philosophy in English-speaking countries. The key to the success of a theory of justice is that it breaks the cold and cheerless situation of western political philosophy. The decline of western political philosophy is well known. Aimee Burns, a scholar specializing in political theory, said: There is not much new in the sunshine of political theory. This fully illustrates the dilemma of the theoretical system constructed by western traditional speculative methods. Rawls' A Theory of Justice is refreshing because of its uniqueness and speculation.

John rawls 192 1 was born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. 1943 graduated from Princeton university, and 1950 received a doctorate in philosophy. Later, he studied at Princeton University (1950- 1952) and Cornell University (65438). As a scholar born in the university atmosphere, his whole ideological system is full of pedantry. Some critics compare Rawls with Plato, Aquinas and Hegel, but Rawls is different from them. Those great thinkers have rich works and a wide range of knowledge, but Rawls' main work is just A Theory of Justice. The book A Theory of Justice, with more than 400,000 words, is actually a collection of essays. Rawls said in the preface: "When I put forward" A Theory of Justice ",I tried to gather the ideas in my papers written in the past ten years and make them a coherent point of view." Rawls first published his first book, An Outline of Decision-making Procedures Applicable to Ethics, in 195 1. The basic idea is that justice is fairness (1958). Later, he successively wrote Concepts of Constitutional Freedom and Justice (1963), Sense of Justice (1963), Civil Resistance (1966) and Justice in Distribution (1967). 1969 rpm 1978. Rawls completed the sorting and processing of the whole book at the Advanced Research Center of Stanford University. In these 20 years, Rawls has been facing criticism and challenges from all sides, which prompted him to write one paper after another to improve his argument and refute the other's point of view. This process also makes The Theory of Justice very obscure and full of concepts. In order to explain a problem, Rawls often has to discuss and demonstrate it repeatedly. But his preface shows his thinking.

The theory of justice, as its name implies, is the study of justice. The concept of justice plays an important role in the history of human thought and social development. As Rawls said, justice is the first virtue of social system, just as truth is the first virtue of ideological system (section 1). Rawls regards the stipulation of justice view as the cornerstone of social development. The book A Theory of Justice is divided into three parts and nine chapters. The first part "Theory" discusses the definition, historical development, function, connotation and original state of justice. The second part "system" analyzes how to use the principle of justice determined in the first part to analyze the social and political system, economic system and civil life, which involves the specific level of people's social life. Here, the social and practical significance of Rawls' highly speculative view of justice is embodied in detail, as well as his solutions to contradictions, conflicts and civil strife in western society as a scholar. The third part "Purpose" discusses the topics in the field of ethics, involving a series of topics such as kindness, self-esteem, virtue, sense of justice, moral emotion, self-discipline and so on. This part is different from the first two parts, and the discussion and analysis seem to be slightly alienated from his principle of justice. In fact, Rawls thinks this part is very important, and if the last part of the argument is not considered, the theory of justice will be misunderstood (preface). Indeed, if a just principle wants to prevail in a society, the key lies in whether people can accept and believe it, which involves the formation of moral psychology and sense of justice. If people don't have a just psychological atmosphere and cultural environment, a just principle can't be accepted, which is what Rawls said: "Justice is the relative stability of fairness". Although the content of this part is not as novel as the first two parts, it is indispensable in the whole theory.

Justice has always been a concept of value, and there are different opinions. In the earliest written records, justice refers to equality and justice in a general sense, including all virtues and sound moral behavior patterns. Later, justice was gradually distinguished from equality and charity. However, the concept of justice is still a broad concept and different thinkers have made different definitions. For example, Plato put forward in the Republic that justice means that people from all walks of life perform their duties, keep order and get their place. Aristotle believes that equality is justice, but justice can be divided into "equal amount" and "equal proportion". The former refers to average justice, that is, everyone's income between equal individuals is equal in quantity and ability, while the latter refers to distributive justice, that is, things commensurate with it are distributed among unequal individuals according to their different values. Hume believes that public welfare is the only source of justice. Mill concluded that justice is some moral rules about the basic welfare of mankind, and so on. In the contemporary world, justice is still the center of debate, especially in the era of rapid social development, prominent contradictions and great social changes. Rawls is keen to intervene in the dispute of justice, not out of pure academic preference, but in response to the call of society. The debate about justice is not caused by people's subjective feelings, but because there are a lot of injustices in modern society. In the western society with highly developed science and technology, injustice has not been solved because of economic prosperity, but has become more and more prominent and has become the source of endless social contradictions. It is in this atmosphere that Rawls devoted himself to the study of righteousness, and his intention is obvious. If a theory of justice is only a purely academic product, it will never cause such a great sensation.

Rawls is well aware of this. At the beginning, he said that the theme of justice is the basic structure of society, or more accurately, it is the main social system that allocates basic rights and obligations and determines the distribution mode of benefits generated by social cooperation (Section II). Rawls divided the existing theories of justice that dominated western society into two categories: (1) utilitarian view of justice. Rawls summarized it as follows: if the arrangement of the main social system obtains the maximum net difference that all social members always meet, then this society is a well-organized society and therefore a just society (Section 5). The basic view of utilitarianism is to seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. The idea of utilitarianism is that when everyone realizes his own interests, he will measure his own losses according to his own gains. Social happiness consists of personal happiness. The principle of individuals is to maximize their own welfare and satisfy their own desires, while the principle of society is to maximize the welfare of groups and the desires of all members. (2) intuitive view of justice (section 7). Intuitionism does not think about problems from the gain or loss of individuals or groups, but achieves some basic principles through self-reflection, which are supreme. It can be used to measure various conflicting principles of justice. Intuitionism does not include other measurement methods. People rely on intuition and what is closest to the right thing in people's eyes. Intuitionism emphasizes the complexity of moral facts, which often makes people unable to

In explaining people's judgments, intuitionism holds that "there is no higher presumption standard to determine the appropriate focus of different principles of justice." There are obvious differences between these two views of justice: one is based on utilitarianism and the other is based on intuition.

Rawls disagrees with these two views. But he is particularly opposed to utilitarianism. He believes that in many theories of modern moral philosophy, some form of utilitarianism has always prevailed. Moral philosophy is one of the foundations of social ideal life mode. Without changing the dominant moral philosophy of a society, it is impossible to change various systems of this society. From this perspective, Rawls took the utilitarian view of justice as the object of criticism. In fact, the utilitarian ideas spread by Hume, Bentham, Adam Smith and Mill have always occupied a dominant position in western society, and these ideas and principles have laid the foundation of western political system, social system and economic system. However, these systems have not overcome the profound contradictions in society. Rawls is a reformist. He believes that the key to improving the western social system lies in changing the dominant utilitarian view of justice. This is the goal that Rawls set for himself.

Rawls is convinced that the utilitarian view of justice has several drawbacks: (1) it does not reveal the principle difference between the requirements of freedom and rights and the desire for growth of social welfare, it does not affirm the priority principle of justice, it is justified to deny the greater interests of some people and deprive others of their freedom, and political transactions and social interests cannot be the reasons to hinder basic rights; (2) It assumes that the adjustment principle of a human society is only an extension of the principle of personal choice, which is not enough. Here, the principle agreed by people is not regarded as the basis of justice, and its principle content cannot be the macro standard to regulate all people; (3) It is teleology, which explains the theory of justice by maximizing goodness, while the true principle of justice is set in advance, and it is impossible to see whether it is just from the results; (4) I think that the satisfaction of any desire is valuable in itself, and I don't distinguish the nature of these desires. I don't ask the source and nature of these gratifications and what impact they will have on happiness, such as how to treat people's behavior of getting happiness by discriminating against each other or damaging the freedom of others in order to improve their dignity (Section 6). It directly criticizes utilitarianism and indirectly criticizes various unfair phenomena in western society, such as uneven distribution, supremacy of desire, racial discrimination, poverty and so on.

Since the utilitarian view of justice is not enough and there are many mistakes, what kind of view of justice should be established? Rawls' point of view is very clear: "What I want to do is to summarize the traditional social contract theory represented by Locke, Rousseau and Kant and raise it to a higher level." Therefore, Rawls is based on the traditional contract theory method. Contract theory has a long history in the west, and some modern ideas are contract theorists, such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and others. Their contract thought once played a shocking role in western history, but later the times changed and the contract theory gave way to utilitarianism. It can be said that contract theory represents a kind of political radicalism, while utilitarianism means an idea of economic interests. After the establishment of the capitalist system, it is not surprising that utilitarianism takes the contract theory instead. Rawls once again raised the banner of contract theory, which in itself is a unique opportunity.

Rawls' theory of justice, in a word, can be called the theory that justice is fairness. To get the principle of this theory, we need to explain a premise first, that is, how the social contract came into being. A reasonable or logical assumption must be made here. Rawls called this hypothetical environment "original state", which is equivalent to the position of natural state in the ideological system of Rousseau, Locke and others.

Primitive state is purely a rational hypothesis, which cannot be demonstrated in actual history. Rawls knows this. He said that the original state is a purely hypothetical state (section 20). In the process of defining the concept of justice, Rawls often relies partly on intuitionism. He said that the intuitive view that justice is fairness will regard the principle of justice as the goal of the original contract reached in an appropriately specified original state (section 20). The design intention of primitive state is to exclude all kinds of historical and realistic factors, give people a state of pure logical thinking and make people produce the principle of justice. In the primitive state, all parties are moral subjects and treat them equally. The result of their choice does not depend on random accidents or the relative balance of social forces. But the original state alone is not enough to realize the first principle of justice, and other conditions must be set.

In order to set the original state, Rawls further put forward several core concepts: (1) just environment. In this environment, human cooperation is possible and necessary. Objective conditions include a certain geographical area, similar physical condition and mental state, and moderate deficiency. Subjective conditions include that all parties have roughly similar needs and interests, all parties have their own life plans, and there are differences in philosophy, religious beliefs, politics and social theories, so people have both cooperation and conflicts, so some principles are needed to guide people to decide the division of interests (Section 22). (2) Formal restrictions on the concept of justice. People in the primitive state have to accept certain restrictions, so that they can effectively determine and choose principles. These limitations are that principles should be general in nature, not specific, and the first principle must be able to serve as a blueprint for an orderly society. In application, principles should work for everyone with moral personality, restrictive conditions should be made public, and everyone should know that various conflicting requirements should be given a priority. Finally, the principles derived from the original state should be decisive, and there is no higher standard on them (Section 23). The nature of the principle of justice is defined here; (3) The veil of ignorance. This concept is a bolder assumption, so that the concept of pure procedural justice can be applied. Primitive state is a hypothesis, which requires people to get rid of all kinds of feelings and understandings at present, draw a curtain in front of the real society, and make people think about the principle of justice from scratch. Veil of ignorance assumes that no one knows his position, class background, natural qualifications, natural ability, rationality and strength in society, nor his idea of goodness, reasonable life planning and psychological characteristics, nor does anyone know the economic or political situation of this society. Because everyone's social status, conditions or personal temperament will affect a person's judgment on the principle of justice, they must be separated by the veil of ignorance, so as to establish the original state (section 24) and (4) the rationality of reasoning. There is also a crucial condition for the success of the original state method, which is to assume that people in the original state are rational. The so-called rationality means that people try their best to advance their own interests when choosing principles. Their choices are often related, and they also have the ability to establish a sense of justice. They try their best to get the highest possible absolute score, regardless of each other's gains and losses (section 25). Of course, such people are also theoretically hypothetical people, not people in real life. People in real life, such as secular desires, are restricted by social and various background factors and cannot act as Rawls assumes in theory. The above four conditions determine the basic attributes of the original state, from which the principle of justice can be deduced.