Jake Eisaguirre
Word Count: 1505
Rawls V.S. Nozick
In order to understand how social institutions could succeed, one must know what social justice is and how it justifies political and social policies on a person's rights to bring about equality in society. Or on the other hand, one could argue that social institutions can be a violation of one's rights and social justice can only occur if social institutions are kept at a bare minimum. These two opposing views about social justice come from two philosophers named John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Social justice can encompass a wide range of topics, but for this paper, I will focus on ones equal opportunity to succeed. I will compare and contrast Rawls and Nozick's ideas on social justice and…show more content… Rawls has two principles that he uses for social justice that is mainly focused on the ideas of liberty. To understand the prior terms we must first understand Rawls ideas and definitions about society. He believes society is a group of individuals who work together and follow the same set of rules they put forth that they all agree on. They all agree on those rules because they do not want to be the worst off in society and have the possibility to live happily. The main goal of society is improving the life of the people within it so the worst off in the society does not truly have it that bad. The issues that can arise from this style of society are that some individuals will only want the benefits and not the burdens. This is where the need for social justice and the social contract arise. The social contract Rawls refers to is the agreement of the people on certain principles of legal and justice principles. Rawls continues to discuss the two underlying principles of justice in a society veiled in ignorance. The first principle of social justice is the equality of rights and the second being the difference principle or distributive justice of goods. Once again we will see that Robert Nozick does not agree with this at all in the next paragraph. The first principle is in regards to a person’s basic political liberty in a functioning society, that being freedom of speech, liberty of conscience, freedom of personal property, and freedom to vote. The second principle of social justice is the difference principle or distributive justice of goods, or as the mainstream media would say, the redistribution of wealth. Rawls believes that the redistribution is just if the least well off receives the greatest benefit and that positions must be open to everyone. Rawls poses a hypothetical situation
