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Showing posts from July, 2008

Rawls philosophy and contemporary equal opportunity

Wikipedia outlines philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) attempts to solve the problems of distributive justice by utilising a variant of the social contract. He does this by two core principles of justice: liberty principle and difference principle, and calls it ‘Justice as Fairness’. Writing in A Theory of Justice (1971) Rawls outlines a simple definition of the ‘first principle’: 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. Contemporary equal opportunity policies generally conflict with this principle. In attempting to solve class injustice contemporary policies recognise exclusiveness based on certain categories: race, gender, disability. Information and data that pertain to these categories establish a scale where socio-economic outcomes can be readily defined. Where this principle finds conflict with components of contemporary policy is with the ‘compatibility’ requirement