Quotes from John Rawls

closed system

Ahora bien, estas reflexiones sólo muestran lo que hemos sabido todo el tiempo, esto es, que el principio de eficiencia no puede servir por sí solo como concepción de la justicia.[10] Por tanto, deberá ser complementado de algún modo. En el sistema de la libertad natural el principio de eficiencia se ve restringido por ciertas instituciones subyacentes; cuando estas restricciones son satisfechas, cualquier distribución eficaz que resulte es aceptada como justa.

Once we love, we are vulnerable: there is no such things as loving while being ready to consider whether to love, just like that. And the loves that may hurt the least are not the best loves. When we love we accept the dangers of injury and loss.

the radical side of Protestantism, with its idea of the priesthood of all believers and the denial of an ecclesiastical authority interposed between God and the faithful. This view says that moral principles and precepts are accessible to normal reasonable persons generally-various

A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue

moral order arises in some way from human nature itself and from the requirements of our living together in society.

Property-owning democracy avoids [inequalities], not by redistributing income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (educated abilities and trained skills) at the beginning of each period.

Whereas Hume's normative skepticism is moderate: it is part of his psychological naturalism that it is not in our power to control our beliefs by acts of mind and will, for our beliefs are causally determined largely by other forces in our nature. He urges us to try to suspend our beliefs only when they go beyond those generated by the natural propensities of what he calls custom and imagination (custom here is often a stand-in for the laws of association of ideas).

Given the tendency of nations, particularly great powers, to engage in war unjustifiably and to set in motion the apparatus of the state to suppress dissent, the respect accorded to pacifism serves the purpose of alerting citizens to the wrongs that governments are prone to commit in their name.

Finally, moral philosophy was always the exercise of free, disciplined reason alone. It was not based on religion, much less on revelation, since civic religion did not offer a rival to it. In seeking moral ideals more suited than those of the Homeric age to the society and culture of fifth-century Athens, Greek moral philosophy from the beginning stood more or less by itself.

A well-ordered society as one de­signed to advance the good of its members and effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. Thus it is a society in which everyone ac­cepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice, and the basic social institutions satisfy and are known to satisfy these princi­ples.

El resultado es que con frecuencia parecemos obligados a escoger entre el utilitarismo y el intuicionismo.

It is a feature of human sociability that we are by ourselves but parts of what we might be.

Hume does not, then, defend his view by using his reason: it is rather his happy acceptance of the upshot of the balance between his philosophical reflections and the psychological propensities of his nature. This underlying attitude guides his life and regulates his outlook on society and the world. And it is this attitude that leads me to refer to his view as a fideism of nature. (See T:179, 183, 184, 187.)

The bad man desires arbitrary power. What moves the evil man is the love of injustice.

Justice as fairness provides what we want.

People can make arguments from the Bible if they want to. But I want them to see that they should also give arguments that all reasonable citizens might agree to.

Certainly it is wrong to be cruel to animals and the destruction of a whole species can be a great evil. The capacity for feelings of pleasure and pain and for the form of life of which animals are capable clearly impose duties of compassion and humanity in their case.

We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally.

The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.

Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.

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.

The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.