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 the second, equality and/or principle:
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—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
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