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Instructions: In 1000-1200 words (roughly 4-5 pgs), double-spaced, 12pt font Times New Roman (note: therewill be penalties for infringing on the stated length requirements) provide a criticalreconstruction of the readingA critical reconstruction does not merely list the central claims or positions found in a text. Rather your task is to break the argument down into its component parts and to make explicit (reconstruct) how the argument/concept works (justifies a particular position or principle). The key to an effective critical interpretation is to identify discrete steps of an argument and to make explicit the logic connecting the transition from one step/insight or stage in the argument to the next, including addressing obstacles or difficulties to the argument that a skeptical reader might point out. Critical reconstruction does not require that you provide criticism or evaluation. You are NOT being asked to take a position, although good critical reconstruction should put you in a position to be able to identify potential strengths and weaknesses. Critical refers to the reflective character of the interpretation, in the sense of reconstructing (becoming self-conscious) of the process one would need to follow to understand the position being argued in the work. I am posting the screenshot of the required reading below, along with the pdf’s of the required text needed to be studied.
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THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE
I shall now state in a provisional form the two principles of justice that I believe would be
agreed to in the original position. The first formulation of these principles is tentative. As we
go on I shall consider several formulations and approximate step by step the final statement
to be given much later. I believe that doing this allows the exposition to proceed in a natural
way. The first statement of the two principles reads as follows. First: each person is to have
an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar
scheme of liberties for others. Second: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so
that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to
positions and offices open to all. There are two ambiguous phrases in the second principle,
namely “everyone’s advantage” and “open to all.” Determining their sense more exactly
will lead to a second formulation of the principle in §13. The final version of the two
principles is given in §46; §39 considers the rendering of the first principle. These principles
primarily apply, as I have said, to the basic structure of society and govern the assignment of
rights and duties and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages. Their
formulation pre supposes that, for the purposes of a theory of justice, the social structure
may be viewed as having two more or less distinct parts, the first princi ple applying to the
one, the second principle to the other. Thus we distin guish between the aspects of the social
system that define and secure the equal basic liberties and the aspects that specify and
establish social and economic inequalities. Now it is essential to observe that the basic
liber ties are given by a list of such liberties. Important among these are political liberty (the
right to vote and to hold public office) and freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of
conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person, which includes freedom from
psychological oppression and physical assault and dismemberment (integrity of the person);
the right to hold personal property and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined
by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are to be equal by the first principle. The
second principle applies, in the first approximation, to the distribu tion of income and
wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and
responsibility. While the distribution of wealth and income need not be equal, it must be to
everyone’s advantage, and at the same time, positions of authority and responsibility must
be accessible to all. One applies the second principle by holding positions open, and then,
subject to this constraint, arranges social and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits.
These principles are to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle prior to the
second. This ordering means that infringements of the basic equal liberties protected by the
first principle cannot be justi fied, or compensated for, by greater social and economic
advantages. These liberties have a central range of application within which they can be
limited and compromised only when they conflict with other basic liberties. Since they may
be limited when they clash with one another, none of these liberties is absolute; but however
they are adjusted to form one system, this system is to be the same for all. It is difficult, and
perhaps impossible, to give a complete specification of these liberties independently from the
particular circumstances—social, economic, and technological—of a given society. The
hypothesis is that the general form of such a list could be devised with sufficient exactness to
sustain this conception of justice. Of course, liberties not on the list, for example, the right to
own certain kinds of property (e.g., means of production) and freedom of contract as
understood by the doctrine of laissez-faire are not basic; and so they are not protected by the
priority of the first principle. Finally, in regard to the second principle, the distribution of
wealth and income, and positions of authority and responsibility, are to be consistent with
both the basic liberties and equality of opportunity. The two principles are rather specific in
their content, and their accep tance rests on certain assumptions that I must eventually try to
explain and justify. For the present, it should be observed that these principles are a special
case of a more general conception of justice that can be ex pressed as follows. All social
values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect—are
to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to
everyone’s advantage. Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all.
Of course, this conception is extremely vague and requires interpretation. As a first step,
suppose that the basic structure of society distributes certain primary goods, that is, things
that every rational man is presumed to want. These goods normally have a use whatever a
person’s rational plan of life. For simplicity, assume that the chief primary goods at the
disposition of society are rights, liberties, and opportunities, and income and wealth. (Later
on in Part Three the primary good of self-respect has a central place.) These are the social
primary goods. Other primary goods such as health and vigor, intelligence and imagination,
are natural goods; although their possession is influenced by the basic structure, they are not
so directly under its control. Imagine, then, a hypothetical initial arrangement in which all the
social primary goods are equally distributed: every one has similar rights and duties, and
income and wealth are evenly shared. This state of affairs provides a benchmark for judging
improve ments. If certain inequalities of wealth and differences in authority would make
everyone better off than in this hypothetical starting situation, then they accord with the
general conception. Now it is possible, at least theoretically, that by giving up some of their
fundamental liberties men are sufficiently compensated by the resulting social and economic
gains. The general conception of justice imposes no restrictions on what sort of inequalities
are permissible; it only requires that everyone’s position be improved. We need not suppose
anything so drastic as consenting to a condition of slavery. Imagine instead that peo ple
seem willing to forego certain political rights when the economic returns are significant. It is
this kind of exchange which the two principles rule out; being arranged in serial order they do
not permit exchanges between basic liberties and economic and social gains except under
ex tenuating circumstances (§§26, 39). For the most part, I shall leave aside the general
conception of justice and examine instead the two principles in serial order. The advantage of
this procedure is that from the first the matter of priorities is recognized and an effort made to
find principles to deal with it. One is led to attend throughout to the conditions under which
the absolute weight of liberty with respect to social and economic advantages, as defined by
the lexical order of the two principles, would be reasonable. Offhand, this ranking appears
extreme and too special a case to be of much interest; but there is more justification for it than
would appear at first sight. Or at any rate, so I shall maintain (§82). Furthermore, the
distinction between fundamental rights and liberties and economic and social benefits marks
a difference among primary social goods that suggests an important division in the social
system. Of course, the distinctions drawn and the ordering pro posed are at best only
approximations. There are surely circumstances in which they fail. But it is essential to depict
clearly the main lines of a reasonable conception of justice; and under many conditions
anyway, the two principles in serial order may serve well enough. The fact that the two
principles apply to institutions has certain conse quences. First of all, the rights and basic
liberties referred to by these principles are those which are defined by the public rules of the
basic structure. Whether men are free is determined by the rights and duties established by
the major institutions of society. Liberty is a certain pattern of social forms. The first
principle simply requires that certain sorts of rules, those defining basic liberties, apply to
everyone equally and that they allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty
for all. The only reason for circumscribing basic liberties and making them less extensive is
that otherwise they would interfere with one another. Further, when principles mention
persons, or require that everyone gain from an inequality, the reference is to representative
persons holding the various social positions, or offices established by the basic structure.
Thus in applying the second principle I assume that it is possible to assign an expectation of
well-being to representative individuals holding these positions. This expectation indicates
their life prospects as viewed from their social station. In general, the expectations of
representative persons depend upon the distribution of rights and duties throughout the basic
structure. Expectations are connected: by raising the prospects of the representative man in
one position we presumably increase or decrease the prospects of representative men in other
positions. Since it applies to institutional forms, the second principle (or rather the first part
of it) refers to the expectations of representative individuals. As I shall discuss below (§14),
neither principle applies to distributions of particular goods to particular individuals who may
be identified by their proper names. The situation where someone is considering how to
allocate certain com modities to needy persons who are known to him is not within the
scope of the principles. They are meant to regulate basic institutional arrange ments. We
must not assume that there is much similarity from the stand point of justice between an
administrative allotment of goods to specific persons and the appropriate design of society.
Our common sense intui tions for the former may be a poor guide to the latter. Now the
second principle insists that each person benefit from permis sible inequalities in the basic
structure. This means that it must be reason able for each relevant representative man
defined by this structure, when he views it as a going concern, to prefer his prospects with the
inequality to his prospects without it. One is not allowed to justify differences in income or in
positions of authority and responsibility on the ground that the disadvantages of those in one
position are outweighed by the greater advantages of those in another. Much less can
infringements of liberty be counterbalanced in this way. It is obvious, however, that there are
in definitely many ways in which all may be advantaged when the initial arrangement of
equality is taken as a benchmark. How then are we to choose among these possibilities? The
principles must be specified so that they yield a determinate conclusion. I now turn to this
problem.
THE ORIGINAL POSITION AND JUSTIFICATION.
I have said that the original position is the appropriate initial status quo which insures that the
fundamental agreements reached in it are fair. This fact yields the name “justice as fairness.”
It is clear, then, that I want to say that one conception of justice is more reasonable than
another, or justifiable with respect to it, if rational persons in the initial situation would
choose its principles over those of the other for the role of justice. Conceptions of justice are
to be ranked by their acceptability to persons so circumstanced. Understood in this way the
question of justification is settled by working out a problem of deliberation: we have to
ascertain which principles it would be rational to adopt given the contractual situ ation. This
connects the theory of justice with the theory of rational choice. If this view of the problem of
justification is to succeed, we must, of course, describe in some detail the nature of this
choice problem. A problem of rational decision has a definite answer only if we know the
beliefs and interests of the parties, their relations with respect to one another, the alternatives
between which they are to choose, the procedure whereby they make up their minds, and so
on. As the circumstances are presented in different ways, correspondingly different principles
are ac cepted. The concept of the original position, as I shall refer to it, is that of the most
philosophically favored interpretation of this initial choice situ ation for the purposes of a
theory of justice. But how are we to decide what is the most favored interpretation? I assume,
for one thing, that there is a broad measure of agreement that principles of justice should be
chosen under certain conditions. To justify a particular description of the initial situation one
shows that it incorpo rates these commonly shared presumptions. One argues from widely
accepted but weak premises to more specific conclusions. Each of the presumptions should
by itself be natural and plausible; some of them may seem innocuous or even trivial. The aim
of the contract approach is to establish that taken together they impose significant bounds on
acceptable principles of justice. The ideal outcome would be that these conditions determine
a unique set of principles; but I shall be satisfied if they suffice to rank the main traditional
conceptions of social justice. One should not be misled, then, by the somewhat unusual
conditions which characterize the original position. The idea here is simply to make vivid to
ourselves the restrictions that it seems reasonable to impose on arguments for principles of
justice, and therefore on these principles themselves. Thus it seems reasonable and generally
acceptable that no one should be advantaged or disadvantaged by natural fortune or social
circumstances in the choice of principles. It also seems widely agreed that it should be
impossible to tailor principles to the circumstances of one’s own case. We should insure
further that particular inclinations and aspirations, and persons’ conceptions of their good do
not affect the principles adopted. The aim is to rule out those principles that it would be
rational to propose for acceptance, however little the chance of success, only if one knew
certain things that are irrelevant from the standpoint of justice. For example, if a man knew
that he was wealthy, he might find it rational to advance the principle that various taxes for
welfare measures be counted unjust; if he knew that he was poor, he would most likely
propose the contrary principle. To represent the desired restrictions one imagines a situation
in which everyone is deprived of this sort of information. One excludes the knowledge of
those contingencies which sets men at odds and allows them to be guided by their prejudices.
In this manner the veil of ignorance is arrived at in a natural way. This concept should cause
no difficulty if we keep in mind the constraints on arguments that it is meant to express. At
any time we can enter the original position, so to speak, simply by following a certain
procedure, namely, by arguing for principles of justice in accordance with these restrictions.
It seems reasonable to suppose that the parties in the original position are equal. That is, all
have the same rights in the procedure for choosing principles; each can make proposals,
submit reasons for their acceptance, and so on. Obviously the purpose of these conditions is
to represent equality between human beings as moral persons, as creatures having a
conception of their good and capable of a sense of justice. The basis of equality is taken to be
similarity in these two respects. Systems of ends are not ranked in value; and each man is
presumed to have the requisite ability to understand and to act upon whatever principles are
adopted. Together with the veil of ignorance, these conditions define the principles of justice
as those which rational persons concerned to advance their interests would consent to as
equals when none are known to be advan taged or disadvantaged by social and natural
contingencies. There is, however, another side to justifying a particular description of the
original position. This is to see if the principles which would be chosen match our considered
convictions of justice or extend them in an acceptable way. We can note whether applying
these principles would lead us to make the same judgments about the basic structure of
society which we now make intuitively and in which we have the greatest con fidence; or
whether, in cases where our present judgments are in doubt and given with hesitation, these
principles offer a resolution which we can affirm on reflection. There are questions which we
feel sure must be answered in a certain way. For example, we are confident that religious
intolerance and racial discrimination are unjust. We think that we have examined these things
with care and have reached what we believe is an impartial judgment not likely to be
distorted by an excessive attention to our own interests. These convictions are provisional
fixed points which we presume any conception of justice must fit. But we have much less
assurance as to what is the correct distribution of wealth and authority. Here we may be
looking for a way to remove our doubts. We can check an interpretation of the initial
situation, then, by the capacity of its principles to accommodate our firmest convictions and
to provide guidance where guidance is needed. In searching for the most favored description
of this situation we work from both ends. We begin by describing it so that it represents
generally shared and preferably weak conditions. We then see if these conditions are strong
enough to yield a significant set of principles. If not, we look for further premises equally
reasonable. But if so, and these principles match our considered convictions of justice, then
so far well and good. But presumably there will be discrepancies. In this case we have a
choice. We can either modify the account of the initial situation or we can revise our existing
judgments, for even the judgments we take provisionally as fixed points are liable to revision.
By going back and forth, sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual circumstances,
at others with drawing our judgments and conforming them to principle, I assume that
eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable
conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and
adjusted. This state of affairs I refer to as reflective equilibrium.7 It is an equilibrium because
at last our principles and judgments coincide; and it is reflective since we know to what
principles our judgments conform and the premises of their derivation. At the moment
everything is in order. But this equilibrium is not necessarily stable. It is liable to be upset by
further examination of the conditions which should be imposed on the contractual situation
and by particular cases which may lead us to revise our judgments. Yet for the time being we
have done what we can to render coherent and to justify our convictions of social justice. We
have reached a conception of the original position.
I shall not, of course, actually work through this process. Still, we may think of the
interpretation of the original position that I shall present as the result of such a hypothetical
course of reflection. It represents the attempt to accommodate within one scheme both
reasonable philosophi cal conditions on principles as well as our considered judgments of
jus tice. In arriving at the favored interpretation of the initial situation there is no point at
which an appeal is made to self-evidence in the traditional sense either of general conceptions
or particular convictions. I do not claim for the principles of justice proposed that they are
necessary truths or derivable from such truths. A conception of justice cannot be de duced
from self-evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of
the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent
view. A final comment. We shall want to say that certain principles of justice are justified
because they would be agreed to in an initial situation of equality. I have emphasized that this
original position is purely hypothetical. It is natural to ask why, if this agreement is never
actually entered into, we should take any interest in these principles, moral or otherwise. The
answer is that the conditions embodied in the description of the original position are ones that
we do in fact accept. Or if we do not, then perhaps we can be persuaded to do so by
philosophical reflection. Each aspect of the contractual situation can be given supporting
grounds. Thus what we shall do is to collect together into one conception a number of
conditions on principles that we are ready upon due consideration to recognize as reasonable.
These constraints express what we are prepared to regard as limits on fair terms of social
cooperation. One way to look at the idea of the original position, therefore, is to see it as an
expository device which sums up the meaning of these conditions and helps us to extract their
consequences. On the other hand, this conception is also an intuitive notion that suggests its
own elaboration, so that led on by it we are drawn to define more clearly the standpoint from
which we can best interpret moral relationships. We need a conception that enables us to
envision our objective from afar: the intuitive notion of the original position is to do this for
us
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