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John Rawls and the Social Minimum
Author(s) -
WALDRON JEREMY
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
journal of applied philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.339
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1468-5930
pISSN - 0264-3758
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5930.1986.tb00046.x
Subject(s) - argument (complex analysis) , original position , social contract , economic justice , sociology , social justice , context (archaeology) , primary goods , law and economics , position (finance) , epistemology , law , philosophy , politics , political science , economics , paleontology , biochemistry , chemistry , finance , biology
Welfare states are often urged to secure a social minimum for citizens—a level of material well‐being beneath which no‐one should be permitted to fall. This paper examines the justification for such a claim. It begins by criticising John Rawls's rejection of the social minimum approach to justice in A Theory of Justice : the argument Rawls uses to justify the Difference Principle, based on what he calls ‘the strains of commitment’ in the ‘original position’, actually provides a better justification for a social minimum principle. The paper then examines the substance of that argument outside the context of Rawls's contractarianism, showing that there is a general case for seeing to it that desperate need does not go unmet in a liberal society.