Abstract

A theory of social justice for our society is sketched in that has as its unifying focus the ideal of respect for the equal individual worth of persons as centers of evaluation, deliberation, and choice. The aim is to achieve a "reflective equilibrium" between this "basic premise" of the theory and "our conception of social justice," that is, that part of our institutional framework that seems to embody our considered judgments about social justice. ;It is possible for more than one justification to be given for our conception of justice. Thus, an attempt is made at various stages of the argument to show that equal respect at least provides better support for our conception of justice than does the quite powerful tradition of utilitarianism. ;Analysis of our conception of social justice discloses three important elements. First of all, there are three fundamental criteria of justice, namely rights, deserts, and needs. Secondly, there is no fixed order among such criteria. Finally, there are at least some important respects in which the distribution in accordance with these criteria should be equal. ;With regard to the first element of our conception of social justice, equal respect can be shown to justify all three criteria of justice, but utilitarianism can justify only two: rights and needs. Moreover, equal respect supports the essentially-contested plurality of the criteria of justice while utilitarianism claims to have a theoretical solution to every conflict between these criteria. Finally, equal respect supports equal distribution according to these criteria where we think it is appropriate, but utilitarianism does not. ;There is, in addition, one unexpected but significant consequence of the justice of equal respect. An attempt to apply our conception of desert to our economy by means of marginal productivity theory--at least when the attempt is accompanied by a recognition of the limitations of that economic theory--might well call for a more rather than less equal distribution of socio-economic benefits and burdens than now obtains