Distributive Justice: Rawls and Nozick (SACE Stage 2 Philosophy)

What this dot point is asking

You need to explain Rawls's and Nozick's theories, contrast patterned with historical principles, and evaluate which better captures justice in distribution.

Rawls: justice as fairness

John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, seeks principles of justice that free and equal people would agree to under fair conditions. His device is the original position, in which parties choose principles from behind a veil of ignorance that hides their class, talents, race, sex and conception of the good. Not knowing where they will land, rational choosers will, Rawls argues, protect against the worst outcomes.

They would select two principles. First, each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with the same for all. Second, social and economic inequalities are permitted only if they satisfy fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle: inequalities must work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. The reasoning relies on maximin, choosing the option whose worst outcome is best, which is rational when the stakes are this high and the veil hides your prospects.

Nozick: the entitlement theory

Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, rejects the whole project of distributing according to a pattern. His entitlement theory has three parts: a principle of just acquisition of unheld things, a principle of just transfer by voluntary exchange or gift, and a principle of rectification of past injustice. A holding is just if it was acquired or transferred justly. There is no further question of whether the overall pattern is fair.

Nozick argues that any patterned principle, one that ties justice to a formula such as equality or need, cannot be maintained without continuous interference in people's lives. His Wilt Chamberlain example shows that if people freely pay to watch a star play, a just equal distribution quickly becomes unequal through voluntary choices. To preserve the pattern you would have to forbid those choices. Hence Nozick's striking claim that redistributive taxation for the sake of a pattern is on a par with forced labour, since it takes the fruits of one's work without consent.

Patterned versus historical justice

The deep divide is between end-state or patterned theories, which judge a distribution by how it looks now or by a formula, and historical theories, which judge it by how it actually came about. Rawls is broadly patterned: the difference principle assesses the structure of the outcome. Nozick is historical: only the pedigree of holdings matters. This distinction reframes the debate, because the two sides are answering different questions, one about fair shares and one about respecting the history of free transactions.

Evaluation

Rawls's theory powerfully captures the intuition that no one deserves their starting place in the natural and social lottery, so a just society should not let those arbitrary facts dictate life prospects; critics object that the difference principle may stifle incentives and that the original position smuggles in the risk-averse maximin choice. Nozick's theory honours self-ownership and the moral weight of consent; critics reply that initial acquisition is rarely clean, that his account of just original acquisition is underdeveloped, and that treating all taxation as forced labour ignores the social conditions that make wealth possible. A strong answer shows that the choice between them tracks a prior choice between valuing outcomes and valuing the history of free choices, and weighs the costs of each.