抄録
Since its publication in 1971, A Theory of Justice has been the object of very extensive discussion by philosophers, economists, political scientist, sociologists, and others.
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the structure and its characteristics of Rawls, contractarian paradigm, and then to make clear the point of Nozick's critique to Rawls' distributive justice.
Central to Rawls' theory is the idea of the “original position”, a hypothetical situation where men and women come together to form a social contract. All of the actors in the original position are seen as “rational”.
One feature of justice as fairness is to think of the parties in the initial situation as rational and mutually disinterested. This does not mean that the parties in original position are egoists, that is, individuals with only certain kinds of interests, say in wealth, prestige, and domination.
In arriving at a social contract, they must choose principles of justice behind a “veil of ignorance”. In the original position, they are ignorant of the social positions, class status and also of their own natural talents and abilities.
The idea of the original position is to set up a fair procedure so that any principles agreed to will be just.
According to Nozick, Rawls' theory of justice violates people's rights and, therefore, cannot be morally justified. Nozick's point is that Rawls' theory ignores the issue of entitlement theory.
Nozick's entitlement theory is particularly concerned with the justice of the acquisition and transfer of property or holdings. He rejects the patterned and end-state principles found in most theories of distributive justice.
But he dismissed the merits of the theory of Rawls. For Rawls, the natural assets and abilities are the only collective assets.
