Rawls

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John Rawls, professor of philosophy at Harvard, published a paper in the Philosophical Review for 1958 called 'Justice as Fairness', followed up by various other papers, and in 1971 a large book A Theory of Justice. Rawls disagrees with the Utilitarians over their way of spelling out the idea of the happiness of mankind generally. They say: Consider whether the act, rule or institution to be evaluated is best for the happiness of mankind generally. The difficulty is that often it will be both to the advantage of some people and to the disadvantage of others. The effect on the happiness of mankind generally has to be assessed by somehow balancing off the bad effects on some people against the good effects on others. There is no way of avoiding this. Some of the practical questions we have to decide do involve choice between possible courses of action all of which have good effects on some people and bad effects on others.
If a political or ethical theory can't give us any guidance on deciding questions like that then it is almost useless. Questions of distributive justice especially call for decisions between conflicting interests - if some get more others get less. So the effect on the happiness of mankind generally will be the resultant of good effects on some, bad effects on others.
Rawls's objection to Utilitarianism is that it puts no restrictions upon the subordination of some people's interests to those of others, except that the net outcome should be good. This would allow, any degree of subordination, provided the benefit to those advantaged was great enough. Rawls thinks that a theory of justice cannot let disadvantages to some be justified by advantages to others.
Let us imagine we are talking about a household. On a particular occasion the interest of a minority may be subordinated to that of a majority - they will watch the TV program most them want. But if the same people are outvoted every time their household will s...