Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society

Our responsibility as a society to guarantee the availability of meaningful work is grounded in a pragmatic recognition that some kind of work is more or less necessary for most of us, and that since this typically takes up so much of our time it is bound to shape our lives in profound ways. In practical terms, as we shall see, we can ensure these

In philosophical circles, Rawls’s approach is described as asserting the “priority of the right over the good.” On this view, our rights define a framework within which we can each pursue our beliefs about how to live; in contrast to the alternative, where we start with a particular conception of the good, and design rights in order to promote it.

For Rawls, a just society is one in which we can “face one another openly,” in the sense that we can offer a justification to one another for the way society is organized, including to the least well off.

Rawls rejected the notion, associated with many followers of the classical liberal tradition, that freedom of exchange is on a par with, or should even take priority over, personal freedom or political equality.

The problem here is not with the notion of civility itself, but with a narrow conception of what it entails. For Rawls, the “duty of civility” is not only, or even mainly, about style. It is also about substance: when it comes to politics, we should do our best to ensure that the positions we advocate lie within the boundaries of public reason—in o

Rawls explicitly rejected “welfare state capitalism,” arguing that we cannot create a fair economy through redistribution alone. As we have seen, the difference principle is concerned not just with income and wealth, but with inequalities of economic power and control and of opportunities for self-respect; and this broad perspective, in turn, point

For Rawls, however, “ideal theory” was always a precursor to “non-ideal theory”: whereas the former defines the goal, the latter “asks how this long-term goal might be achieved, or worked towards, usually in gradual steps.”[60] We need ideal theory because without a clear target to work towards, however remote, we are always in danger of merely twe

The difference principle is concerned with the structural inequalities that affect the life prospects of different social groups—those that result from the way we organize our social and economic institutions—rather than inequalities that inevitably arise as people make choices and go about their lives.[58] It requires no more interference than any

But when it comes to questions about our most elemental freedoms, we should avoid arguments about personal morality and sin and focus on our fundamental right to live according to our own beliefs.