Rawls believes that "justice is the primary value of social system". All unjust things should be reformed or abolished. "As the primary value of human activities, truth and justice will never compromise." He divided justice into social justice and individual justice, and advocated that justice is social justice first. Because people live in society, only on the basis of social system can we decide whether an individual's behavior is morally reasonable. In order to demonstrate his theory of justice, he used an improved social contract theory. He put all the parties to the contract behind a veil of ignorance, making them ignorant of any specific situation about their own characteristics, and tried to establish a fundamental moral principle to guide the design of the system by understanding and analyzing people's choices in this state. This is his principle of justice.
Rawls has two principles of justice: "First, everyone should have equal rights to obtain a similar freedom system, which is compatible with the most extensive basic freedom system owned by others;" Second, the arrangement of social and economic inequality should conform to the principle of fair storage and the best interests of the least beneficiaries; In addition, positions and positions are open to all under the conditions of fairness and equal opportunities. "Here, the first principle is actually the principle that freedom takes precedence." Freedom can only be restricted for the sake of freedom ". The second principle is the combination of the principle of equal opportunity and the principle of difference. The status of the two principles is different, the first principle is higher than the second principle; In the second principle, the principle of equal opportunity is higher than the principle of difference.
Among the two principles of justice, he pays attention to respect for people, which conforms to people's psychology and realistic trend and is easy to be accepted; The justice he advocated was social justice, and he acknowledged and emphasized the principle of difference, that is, his social justice had a certain degree of relativity. This form of justice has established the equality of people's rights and taken care of people's material interests, so it has played a great role in maintaining social stability. In addition, his theory is not a simple reply to the past, but a reply to development, which is not reflected by western traditional liberalism. In a word, Rawls' principle of justice, as the basic guiding principle, involves all fields of society and profoundly affects all aspects of society.
Criticism of Rawls' Theory of Justice
Criticize the rationality of the original contract state of the principle of justice. All the premises of Rawls' theory of justice are the initial contract under the condition of "veil of ignorance". From this perspective, his theory is deontology with the nature of natural law, that is, "should" derived from "veil of ignorance" situation. Under the guidance of this "should", mankind maintains fairness, stability, efficiency and so on in all aspects. Although his theory of justice is logical and has a great guiding and promoting effect on the development of society, it has not escaped the fate of being questioned. People generally hold negative opinions on whether the principle of justice is reasonably derived from the initial contract state. The original contract of the principle of justice is only a hypothesis under the background of "veil of ignorance". Here, Rawls tried to reach the initial contract through a set, rational and indifferent personal choice. However, even if each individual puts aside the influence of wealth, prestige and rights, their views on justice may be different, so under the veil of ignorance, there will inevitably be an opposing "original state of justice", thus making the initial contract in a chaotic situation. Furthermore, what is the content of "veil of ignorance"? Where does its criterion come from? If there are standards, then why take these as standards? How are they judged? ..... all the problems should be solved by Rawls.
Criticism of "Reflective Balance" Rawls's "Reflective Balance" is a method, which requires a perfect moral theory to be suitable for people's moral judgment after careful consideration. This method is applied to the principle of a theory of justice, that is, people should constantly modify and adjust the usual model of hypothetical contract until it is not much different from people's usual concept of justice. We should first affirm his thought of keeping pace with the times, but there are many problems in the application of this method, such as: What kind of reflection should we make on "reflective balance"? How to reflect? Is the result of reflection fair? How to prove it? Wait a minute. Because the original contract should be virtual, there is a problem of rationality in itself. When people reflect, it is easy to fall into the difficult problem of judging the standard of justice, not to mention integrating the advanced factors brought about by social development. In another sense, if the initial contract is formulated according to the just requirements of the real social development, it is not reflection, but innovation.
Analyzing and Criticizing the Principles of A Theory of Justice Facing these two principles, our first concern is: Is the principle itself an acceptable theory of justice? The answer to this question is yes. Even if these two principles of justice cannot be correctly and effectively inferred from the original contract, they will have great temptation, because they are self-evident moral truths; On the other hand, these two principles make up for the deficiency of utilitarianism in property distribution, especially the principle of "making the worst get the greatest benefit", which has unlimited and full appeal to mankind. This has been confirmed in the reality that people enthusiastically support the "theory of justice". However, Rawls' principle of "justice theory" is also flawed: from the first principle, we can easily find that Rawls' freedom and equality only emphasize the priority of freedom. He believes that only when human beings are free can they develop and complete other things, and only when they enjoy the right to freedom equally can they further maintain social order. But the "freedom" he refers to is not absolute and unequal, so his theory does not substantially eliminate all kinds of restrictions on freedom. The second principle is to openly admit the inequality of freedom, but put forward a way to balance this inequality, that is, to meet the best interests of the least beneficiaries; On the surface, equality of opportunity (formal equality) embodies social justice by safeguarding the rights and equality of opportunity of the least beneficiaries. However, as soon as his principles come into contact with social reality, it is easy to expose his capitalist nature.
Enlightenment of "Justice Theory" on Building a Harmonious Society in China
China is building a harmonious socialist society with China characteristics. As one of the essences of China culture, the essential requirement of "harmony" is that social development conforms to the objective laws of human social development. Rawls' principle of justice starts from the social system and structure, from the fair distribution of political power, obligation and economic interests, and makes appropriate arrangements and restrictions on people's pursuit of value, thus making the whole society in a harmonious, stable and orderly state. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to the construction of a harmonious society in China.
Politically, the principle of freedom priority has reference value for the formulation of national policies, systems and laws. According to the principle of freedom first, the formulation of national policies, systems and laws should first guarantee the equality and freedom of citizens, that is, the equality of rights, obligations and freedoms. This means that when formulating national policies, systems, laws and regulations, China must first protect the rights, obligations and freedoms of every citizen. If it cannot be guaranteed, other principles should be used to adjust the balance; Then let every citizen participate in it with the principle of equal opportunity. Only such policies and laws are basically fair and most in line with the core concept of people-oriented in a harmonious society.
In the economic aspect, Rawls' theory of justice mainly solves the relationship between fairness and efficiency. In contemporary China, which is building a harmonious society, it is of great significance to solve the relationship between them: it is related to the distribution of economic interests of the people in China, the improvement of people's living standards, the sustained economic development and social stability, and the success or failure of building a harmonious society in China. However, with the rapid development of China's economy, the gap between the rich and the poor and the uneven distribution between the rich and the poor have become increasingly serious, which is largely caused by unfair competition and unequal opportunities for competitors. Therefore, to solve this problem, it is more necessary for the government to intensify reform, improve the economic system and relevant laws and policies, create and establish a fair, just and free economic competition environment, promote the improvement of efficiency, and continuously promote economic development and prosperity.
In terms of culture and education, the principle of justice is conducive to solving the problem of unfair education in China at this stage. How to treat and find out the causes of unfair education is a major practical problem at present. In order to achieve educational equity, we must consider the actual situation of society and education. Rawls' two principles of justice can provide a good reference for solving the problem of unfair education. At present, the Chinese government is trying to improve the legal provisions on education, greatly increase investment in education, and treat urban and rural education differently to improve these unfair phenomena.
The above formulation is based on ignoring the source of its principle of justice. In fact, there are many inequalities in real society, such as natural inequalities, which are difficult to eliminate, but from the people-oriented point of view, people can try their best to make up for them in society in order to achieve relative equality. The core of Rawls' theory of justice is its principle, so when his theory is combined with the real world, it will involve and guide all aspects of society, which has very specific guiding significance for building a harmonious society in China. However, when we learn from it, we should also see that the equality he expected is essentially unequal, that is, for the sake of formal equality, he applied the same scale to different individuals in fact.
In short, just as Marxism insists that "everything has two sides", Rawls' principle of "justice" is also the unity of positive and negative sides. Therefore, if we want to understand it correctly, we must see its advantages and disadvantages. In the process of building a harmonious society in Socialism with Chinese characteristics, we should not only absorb its advantages, but also avoid its disadvantages, so as to promote the all-round development of China and constantly enhance China's international influence.
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