Comparison of Rawls and Nozick

Jiayan He

Phil 4

May 29, 2015

Words: 1457

Comparison of Rawls and Nozick

        When viewing justice in society, there are two ways of viewing it. First, there is the utilitarian view of justice. This involves sacrifice of personal freedoms and rights for the good of the whole. Then there is the Kantian or “end-based” view on justice which invokes personal freedoms as a means to an end, a positive end. Rawls expresses the ideas of the utilitarian while Nozick takes a more Kantian view on justice.

        Rawls believes that people enter into a social contract when living in a society. He believes that people must look out for one-another even at the risk of their own personal freedoms. Similar to an idealistic parent-child relationship where the parents must sometimes sacrifice what they want to do for their children. This is a very utilitarian view on justice. That we must look out for the good of the whole rather than the good of the individual.

        Rawls’ view to some might seem communistic. This view would be aroused by his view that rules must be made for the group by the group. He goes on to say that rules should not be made with any personal ideals involved (Rawls). His focus is what will make the group happy and what will keep peace within the group. The happiness of the group is more important than the happiness of the individual.

        Inequalities is one area where Rawls’ deviates from utilitarianism. He believes that society does not have any problem with inequalities they have a problem with the rewards that result from those inequalities. Rawls’ believes that people need to realize the relationship between burden and reward. That when people have greater burdens the rewards are much greater. Nozick takes a more end-based view towards justice. He believes that you cannot have equality because everyone is so different. People act towards selfish desires and that is important because you must retain some sense of self (Nozick). He goes on to say that without personal desires being met, ultimately everyone forfeits, and the entire group is unhappy. He also believes that as long as everyone gets what they are entitled to then the group will benefit in the end.

        Nozick believes that with Rawls’ theory that if people get these things unjustly then there is no way to fix the situation. This is where Nozick’s philosophy is more historically based and Rawls’ philosophy is more situational (Rawls). In effect, one purposes generic solutions, while the other offers a more personalized view on justice. Rawls in his theory is incredibly idealistic and bases his theory on the idea that people can agree on one universalistic definition of justice. Rawls makes evident that his theory is completely void of any practical institution. Nozick agrees with Rawls on this point and takes it further by explicating every fault within the theory.