display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
6 ideas
20527 | Liberty Principle: everyone has an equal right to liberties, if compatible with others' liberties [Rawls] |
Full Idea: First Principle [Liberty]: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. | |
From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], 46) | |
A reaction: This is the result of consensus after the initial ignorant position of assessment. It is characteristic of liberalism. I'm struggling to think of a disagreement. |
21018 | The social contract has problems with future generations, national boundaries, disabilities and animals [Rawls, by Nussbaum] |
Full Idea: Rawls saw four difficulties for justice in the social contract approach: future generations; justice across national boundaries; fair treatment of people with disabilities; and moral issues involving non-human animals. | |
From: report of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972]) by Martha Nussbaum - Creating Capabilities 4 | |
A reaction: These are all classic examples of groups who do not have sufficient power to negotiate contracts. |
21041 | Justice concerns not natural distributions, or our born location, but what we do about them [Rawls] |
Full Idea: The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. | |
From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], 17) | |
A reaction: Lovely quotation. There is no point in railing against the given, and that includes what is given by history, as well as what is given by nature. It comes down to intervening, in history and in nature. How much intervention will individuals tolerate? |
23583 | If an aggression is unjust, the constraints on how it is fought are much stricter [Rawls] |
Full Idea: When a country's right to war is questionable and uncertain, the constraints on the means it can use are all the more severe. | |
From: John Rawls (A Theory of Justice [1972], p.379), quoted by Michael Walzer - Just and Unjust Wars 14 | |
A reaction: This is Rawls opposing the idea that combatants are moral equals. The restraints are, of course, moral. In practice aggressors are usually the worst behaved. |
4052 | It has become normal to consider passive euthanasia while condemning active euthanasia [Rachels] |
Full Idea: It seems to have become accepted that passive euthanasia (by withholding treatment and allowing a patient to die) may be acceptable, whereas active euthanasia (direct action to kill the patient) is never acceptable. | |
From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.97) | |
A reaction: He goes on to attack the distinction. It is hard to distinguish the two cases, as well as being hard to judge them. |
4053 | If it is desirable that a given patient die, then moral objections to killing them do not apply [Rachels] |
Full Idea: The cause of death (injection or disease) is important from the legal point of view, but not morally. If euthanasia is desirable in a given case then the patient's death is not an evil, so the usual objections to killing do not apply. | |
From: James Rachels (No Moral Difference [1975], p.102) | |
A reaction: Seems reasonable, but a very consequentialist view. Is it good that small children should clean public toilets? |