It was practically ignored the first time, and now I can elaborate:
About 30 years ago, John Rawls gained wide praise for a theory of justice that revived the idea of the social contract, but proposed to give it a more substantive content. Basically, he asked what kind of society people would negotiate if they were unaware of their own lot in life, and then argued it would be the Welfare State. Of course, the fact that he assumed everyone would have keen anxiety about their eventual circumstances, and downplayed overall social costs, were pointed to as weaknesses.
However, Rawls was onto something, only he overreached. We construct fair rules for society when we imagine what procedures would be established if one did not know one's lot in life, and all came together to make rules that would give everyone a reasonable chance to win, legislatively, in court, and in the market- place. Once those rules are in place, fairness is filled out by actual enactments employing the first set of rules...... |
