The Second Principle: The Equality Principle
The Equality Principle is the component of Justice as Fairness establishing distributive justice.
Rawls presents it as follows in A Theory of Justice:
- "Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:
- (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
- (b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity."
As mentioned previously, Rawls awards the Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle lexical priority over the Difference Principle: a society cannot arrange inequalities to maximise the share of the least advantaged whilst not allowing access to certain offices or positions.
Read more about this topic: Justice As Fairness
Famous quotes containing the words equality and/or principle:
“Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
“The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,—a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,—to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)