Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Orientations
- Part I Poor Health: Social Justice and Mutual Recognition
- Chapter One Unhealthy Children
- Concluding Remarks
- Chapter Two Social Justice and Fairness
- Concluding Remarks: Mutualizing Recognition
- Part II Poor Housing: Social Justice and Mutual Understanding
- Part III Poor Food: Social Justice and Mutual Respect
- Part IV Poor Spirits: Social Justice and Articulacy
Chapter Two - Social Justice and Fairness
from Part I - Poor Health: Social Justice and Mutual Recognition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Preface
- Orientations
- Part I Poor Health: Social Justice and Mutual Recognition
- Chapter One Unhealthy Children
- Concluding Remarks
- Chapter Two Social Justice and Fairness
- Concluding Remarks: Mutualizing Recognition
- Part II Poor Housing: Social Justice and Mutual Understanding
- Part III Poor Food: Social Justice and Mutual Respect
- Part IV Poor Spirits: Social Justice and Articulacy
Summary
“(…) the political culture of a democratic society that has worked reasonably well over a considerable period of time normally contains, at least implicitly, certain fundamental ideas from which it is possible to work up a political conception of justice suitable for a constitutional regime.”
J. Rawls 2001After a first, rather modest empirical look in Chapter One at some of the numbers and situations of unhealthy very poor children, we now need to investigate in Chapter Two some of the conceptual resources in a general theory of justice for understanding more fully the urgent demands on just what social justice itself must look like today.
Primary Goods
We begin with a sketch of the most important theory of justice in the twentieth century, that of John Rawls
The Justice as Fairness Project
John Rawls's (1921–2002) initial project was to articulate the nature of justice in a just society. In trying to elaborate his first reflections, Rawls started with a thought experiment. He asked his readers to imagine a situation of thoroughgoing impartiality in which persons are called upon to judge fundamental issues with a maximum of fairness.
The situation he proposed we imagine is one in which free and rational persons, while knowledgeable about the general facts of the natural and social sciences, are nonetheless completely ignorant of every particularity that concerns their own interests as individuals. That is, the persons in such an imaginary situation are incapable of knowing what might specifically be in their own individual interests and hence are capable of disinterested judgment.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Moments of MutualityRearticulating Social Justice in France and the EU, pp. 37 - 47Publisher: Jagiellonian University PressPrint publication year: 2012