Rawls on Natural Inequality

Abstract

One of the fundamental tenets of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice¹ is the claim that we should seek ‘a conception of justice that nullifies the accidents of natural endowment… as counters in quest for political and economic advantage … ‘ (p. 15). This contention that the unequal distribution of natural assets (such as intelligence, talent, and so on) calls for some form of ‘nullification’ on grounds of justice I shall term the ‘Natural Inequality Theses’ (NIT for short). An important issue that I think has been thus far largely ignored concerns the place of NIT within the overall structure of Rawls’ theory. As is well known, that theory is essentially a form of contractarianism: the principles of justice are what rational persons would unanimously agree to if forced to choose under a set of constraints definitive of what Rawls calls the ‘original position’. Although NIT would not itself be chosen through this process, Rawls does observe that one of the principles that would be selected, the difference principle (which states, roughly, that socio-economic inequalities are justified only to the extent that they maximize the expectations of the least advantaged class in society), ‘represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset and to share in the benefits of that distribution whatever it turns out to be’ (p. 101). What this implies, I think, is that it is through the adoption of the difference principle that those in the original position would in fact satisfy the requirements of NIT.