Rawls Principles Of Justice Essay
Introduction on Rawls & Sandel
Rawls stated his Principles of Justice in his essay as a body comprising two main principles, namely liberty and equality; which was then revised in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement . Equality is then subdivided into Fair Equality of Opportunity and the Difference Principle. He arranges these principles in ‘lexical priority’, prioritising in the order of Liberty, Fair Equality of Opportunity and the Difference Principle . The order of these principles work together when they conflict in practice and first principle is given priority over the second . Moreover, they are intended to work as a single conception of justice – ‘Justice as Fairness’. These principles are always applied to ensure that the “least advantaged” are not forgotten.4
Sandel on the other hand presents his ideas with real life dilemmas and introduces three major schools of thought about justice: the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill; the deontological, rights-based theories of Kant and Rawls and; the theological ethics of Aristotle. Sandel promotes his principles of justice in his book by demonstrating the inadequacies of the first two principles so that we are led to prefer the third. He gave the least consideration to Bentham’s utilitarianism and rejects any
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For the second thinker, Sandel’s review on Rawls’ work and his principles will be discussed in order to find out whether their principles of justice are identical or follow the principles as stipulated by Rawls, provided with relevant citations of articles. The discussion on introducing the principles and how they correlate with one another will form the essence of this
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