Rescuing the Difference Principle (Chapter 6) - John Rawls: Reticent Socialist

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• the “problem of stability”

• A well-ordered society is one that “endures over time,” which entails that it is stabilized by its conception of justice

• It is introduced, in the Restatement, in order to respond to certain misunderstandings

• The argument does not rest

• on a great aversion to uncertainty viewed as a psychological attitude. That would be a very weak argument. Rather, the appropriate reasons rest on such ideas as publicity and reciprocity.

• Stability, publicity, and reciprocity are the key ideas

• Restricted utility adopts the first principle of equal liberty and its priority

• replaces the difference principle with (again, average) utilitarianism

• . In this first comparison, the three conditions for using the maximin principle of choice are all (to a degree) present: (a) there is significant uncertainty about the probability of outcomes under both conceptions, (b) under one of the conceptions there is a highly satisfactory guaranteeable level, and (c) under the other there is no satisfactory guaranteeable level.

• maximin criterion of decision under uncertainty: choose the alternative that has the best outcome in its worst case

• pits justice as fairness against what he calls a “mixed conception” or, more precisely, the “principle of restricted utility” (JF 120; cf. TJ 107)

• takes on all of justice as fairness except the difference principle

• restricted utility admits the first principle of equal liberty, and the principle of fair equal opportunity

• rejects the difference principle and replaces it with the principle of utility subject to a guaranteed social minimum

• “restriction” in restricted utility is the priority of the principles

• additional restriction of a social minimum

• including its guarantee of the fair value of political liberty

• the difference principle is no more acceptable as a general conception than is average utilitarianism

• justice as fairness also recognizes the need for a social minimum, as Rawls concedes in his response to Rodney Peffer

• two residual, lexically posterior principles of distribution: one is the difference principle, and the other is utilitarianism with a guaranteed social minimum set at a “fully satisfactory” leve