Rawls on J.S. Mill's Moral Philosophy

Abstract

In his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, Rawls investigates J.S. Mill's moral philosophy. In order to secure liberty and equality, Mill's utilitarianism requires secondary principles of society including the principle of liberty. Rawls argues that they have substantially the same content as the principles of justice and the idea of public reason in Rawls's “justice as fairness.” But if so, why does he have to criticize utilitarianism? I address the question by mentioning Rawls's distinction between distributive and allocative justice. He seems to think that utilitarians tend to consider social justice as the latter and ignore the former, although Mill does not.