What this covers
You can find A Theory of Justice here https://amzn.to/3bR4MPg
This is the official YouTube channel of Dr. Michael Sugrue.
Please consider subscribing to be notified of future videos, as we upload Dr. Sugrue's vast archive of lectures.
Dr. Michael Sugrue earned his BA at the University of Chicago and PhD at Columbia University.
Source description (no synthesized summary yet).
Rawls's theory of justice as fairness, while philosophically elegant and morally compelling in its protection of the least advantaged, ultimately relies on unchristianized Christian values and becomes impractical when strict application conflicts with major utilitarian goods, suggesting that no single moral framework serves as a universal solution and practical wisdom requires deploying multiple ethical tools contextually.
- Rawls's veil of ignorance and difference principle are attempts to rescue Kantian deontology from utilitarianism's ability to justify slavery and oppression, but rest on unstated religious assumptions about human dignity
- The theory fails the test of practical acceptance when forced to reject curing cancer to avoid minor harm to one person, revealing its overselling as a comprehensive moral system
- Different moral frameworks (Aristotelian golden mean, Kantian categorical imperative, utilitarian greatest good) have legitimate domains and limitations, requiring phronesis (good judgment) to apply correctly rather than adherence to any single theory
This asset isn't compiled yet
You're seeing its claims, ranked. Compile it to build the argument threads, weight them, and check each claim against your library — the full view.
Rawls was deeply religious as an undergraduate at Princeton, intending to become a minister, but his service in the Pacific during World War II horrified him sufficiently to abandon ministerial aspirations and instead become a secular philosopher focused on constructing a just political order.
“rawls steven was deeply religious while he was an undergraduate of princeton he intended to be a minister but his service in the army during world war ii in the pacific horrified him sufficiently that he gave up on the idea of being a minister and instead instead decided to become a secular philosopher of politics particularly um the avatar of a new conception of what a just political order would look like”
The utilitarian maxim of 'the greatest good for the greatest number' is useful and appropriate for specific moral problems like medical resource allocation, but it fails as a comprehensive moral theory because it can justify horrific outcomes like slavery when the pleasure of the majority outweighs the suffering of an enslaved minority.
“in many ways the utilitarian maxim is useful i mean the greatest good for the greatest number um there are many cases in which that's actually a perfectly satisfaction satisfactory deployment of your moral thinking for example when you're figuring out uh how to deploy medicine well get it where it does the most good that makes good sense actually the point is that utilitarianism is a very useful tool but it's not the silver bullet that it claimed to be the solution all problems and morals and legislation that it doesn't manage to do it leads to some frightful cases”
The principle of office and position should be open to all talented individuals regardless of background, ensuring there is no exclusive political caste and allowing all those with capability to develop their talents and influence political life.
“everybody should be able to get access to office holding so in other words anyone who's talented should be able to get the uh development of those talents and should have a shot at influencing political life in other words there should be no exclusive political caste and we wouldn't want that if we were judging from the veil of ignorance”
The idea that the veil of ignorance makes Rawls's theory easier to accept when building a new society from scratch than when trying to change existing power structures is true because the veil of ignorance removes all heteronomy (specific personal characteristics and interests) and forces pure minimalist reasoning.
“that's a very good point rawls's thought idea of the veil of ignorance where we don't know what we are that's actually a very powerful idea because what it does is remove all what khan called heteronomy you don't have any of these specific impulses that characterize you as an individual um you just have to decide what you would want as a kind of minimalist person”
The American Revolution was fundamentally about political liberty rather than political equality, which is why equality does not appear in the Constitution until the 14th Amendment, while the French Revolution first made equality central to revolutionary ideology.
“what he's going to say is that the declaration doesn't go far enough in establishing equality it does a good job with liberty but the problem is is that until we get to the equality of the states uh it never gets mentioned in the constitution until the 14th amendment which is a very strange fact yeah right but uh so the american revolution was a revolution about political liberty not about political equality we're gonna have to wait for the french revolution for that and that's part of why it terrifies americans”
Rawls transforms the social contract from a quasi-historical myth (where pre-political people allegedly gathered and unanimously agreed to create government) into a hypothetical heuristic device, allowing him to ask: what properties would a society have if we contractually agreed to its structure without knowing in advance what position we would occupy?
“now what rawls is going to do he says look there is no such thing as a social contract but it's a kind of a useful regulative idea because it tells us um what obligations we give and take to everyone else in society”
Rawls's A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, fundamentally changed 20th century political philosophy by proposing justice as fairness rather than accepting utilitarian calculations of the greatest good for the greatest number.
“the theory of justice published in 1971 the great acclaim and justifiably so it's a very new or it's very interesting and complex account of what justice is”
Rawls's first principle of justice demands maximum liberty for everyone consistent with equal liberty for all, but determining what counts as a primary good (freedom itself) versus a secondary good (property, contract freedom) creates difficult conceptual boundaries that Rawls never fully resolves.
“the first principle that he has and he's a very precise principle this is a very precise principled argument the first principle that he has is that he wants the maximum liberty for everybody that's consistent with an equal liberty for everybody else and that is an attractive idea and uh he wants equal access to primary goods the difficulty emerges when we try and figure out exactly what the primary goods are all right certain kinds of freedom for example of primary goods freedom of religion freedom of speech uh the difficulty is where the primary goods begin and where the secondary goods take it up um for example is property a primary good or secondary good i think that rawls or gods are secondary one wonders about for example freedom of contract all right uh because contract law involves not just business but things like marriage”
Some of the conclusions Mill (the utilitarian) endorses would be rejected by Kant as simply impermissible regardless of consequences, such as slavery justified by majority pleasure, revealing a fundamental incompatibility between utilitarian and deontological moral frameworks.
“the difficulty is is that some of the things that mill would end up endorsing kant would say we just don't do that the example of america where one-eighth of the population is subordinated and enslaved that's a utilitarian nightmare if people really like it and uh being racist and cruel enough um you can justify that from a utilitarian perspective and kant and uh rawl says that's our problem he's thinking in the 1950s and 60s how can i reformulate the idea of justice so that it doesn't allow those nightmares and he says what that means is ultimately kant was right there are certain lines we do not cross we don't sacrifice anybody in order to achieve some utilitarian greater good much less do we sacrifice millions of people”
Rawls's theory is inconsistent with the American founding documents' doctrine of natural rights, which holds that certain rights are discovered (not invented) and are endowed by a creator, whereas Rawls is a conventionalist who treats rights as socially constructed artifacts without metaphysical foundation.
“yes it is inconsistent with the idea of natural rights that we found that we have in the founding documents of the united states among the founders when jefferson says that they are endowed by their creator with certain rights and that these rights include life liberty and the pursuit of happiness which was originally property jefferson is stating something about the natural moral order which is discovered not invented later on i think rawls is going to be a conventionalist i think that he's going to say look we said once he gives up christianity and the metaphysics that's attached to it then he has to say look we're just down here um and that means that it's not going to have any uh how can i put this uh any uh metaphysical justification or as he put it in his book political liberalism he wants the justification for his views to be political not metaphysical”
Rawls's definition of injustice is simple: any inequality that does not serve the general interest of everyone (not just the majority) is unjust; this reflects his commitment to protecting all individuals, not aggregates.
“rawl's definition of injustice is really simple it's any inequality that doesn't serve the general interest and here i don't mean most i mean everybody he's very straight”
Rawls's second principle, the difference principle, justifies inequalities only when they serve everyone's interests, particularly the interests of the least advantaged, because improving the position of the least well-off ensures that all of society is at least that well off.
“the second thing that roles wants us to do is called the difference principle this is going to be centered on creating as a good very close to just second to liberty so we get the maximum liberty it's possible with everybody else getting an equal package of liberties the next thing we get is equality and this equality is going to be based upon the proposition that human beings are social animals and their capacities are properly social so uh he has a collective view of uh human capacities he's not an individualist in that sense and rolls is creating a kind of uh gonna put a kind of mechanism to make sure that bad inequalities don't emerge”
Rawls's theory cannot adequately protect against the tyranny of the minority because his rigid adherence to the principle of never harming the least advantaged means he would reject even beneficial policies (like curing cancer) if they required doing minor harm to even one person, which most people find irrational.
“and here the problem is i mean and it's a funny turn of events but um the danger with rawls is not tearing you the majority he's got that under control his danger i suspect is something close to tyranny of the minority suppose he could do some very trivial harm to the least among us and as a result i mean a demon would offer us this this possibility but he says look if you are willing to do some minor harm to the least among us i will show you the cure for cancer well okay the utilitarian caching he wants that immediately the kantian says i'm sorry but i can't do that”
Rawls assumes that human capacities and talents (such as Einstein's brilliance or Edison's inventions) belong to the human collective rather than to individuals, meaning everyone is entitled to benefit from these talents, not just the talented individuals themselves.
“rawls assumes that human capacities belong to the human collective rather than to the individuals involved and in that sense everyone's entitled to the brilliance of einstein not just einstein and everyone's entitled to a slice of the inventions of edison not just edison and the idea is something like um those that are fortunate enough to be raised in a good environment can't be praised for that because they didn't choose their environment and those that are given good dna which allows them to have a high functioning mental capacities or artistic capacities still can't claim any special merit for that”
Political theorists who abandon religion typically build something that functionally replaces religion or serves the same purpose while not formally counting as religion, revealing that complete secularization of political philosophy is impossible.
“the difficulty that we have here is that you what turns out to be the case is usually um political theorists are going to build something that takes this the function of religion or serves the function of religion and put that into their theory and it's not going to count as a religion uh others i mean you think of somebody like rousseau strangely enough in the social contract he says here's what we need for as far as a civil religion goes now i think that rawls is trying to de-reloc de-mythologize liberalism the difficulty is that you're not going to get natural rights out of that and that means that it's incompatible with the founding documents of america”
Kant's categorical imperative and approach to morality focus on intentionality and hard, exceptionless rules (such as absolute prohibitions on lying and killing), making Kantians naturally suited to be judges because of their rule-oriented thinking and strong connection between theory and practice.
“kant is focused on intentionality and he creates hard and fast rules the categorical imperative tells you you're not supposed to tell lies and you're not supposed to commit murders and there's no exception to the rule right because you can't universalize the maxim um kantians generally speaking i think would make very good judges because they're very rule-oriented and uh have a strong sense of the connection between theory and practice they don't allow you to fudge anything”
Robert Nozick's libertarian theory of justice as entitlement, developed as a response to Rawls at Harvard, appeals to ordinary intuitions more than Rawls's theory—for example, the person who catches a fish owns it and does not have to share it equally with everyone on the pier.
“nausic was one of the great responders to roles he was in the same philosophy department at harvard so they got a chance to talk this over at lunch again and again and again so uh nausic wrote a book called anarchy state in utopia in which he tried to sketch out what he thought was tyrannical and excessive about roles and so what he had was a kind of minimal state uh kind of it was a sort of libertarian uh retort to roles and this i mean quite a bit of our ordinary moral intuitions will be consistent with a libertarian or i think will be consistent with nausic rather than roles a good example would be here in town i like to go fishing we go i go fishing on the pier one guy catches a fish here's the question for political philosophers who owns the fish the guy that caught it or everybody on the pier now being americans now i think most of us are going to say uh it would be wrong for us each to pull a tiny piece of that fish away from him that it's his fish”
Rawls's assumption that risk minimization is the rational choice behind the veil of ignorance appeals particularly to intellectuals and cautious people, but opportunity maximization is equally rational and appeals to a different psychological disposition, suggesting Rawls conflates his preferred risk-minimization strategy with rationality itself.
“it's not clear to me why it's more rational to be a risk minimizer than it is to be an opportunity maximizer all right i mean it might be i think it appeals to professors because professors tend to be kind of timid bookish people and they like they uh spend a lot of time in their books but they're not usually people uh whose lives are full of action right so uh i think minimizing risk appeals to intellectuals and perhaps insurance adjusters whereas uh maximizing opportunity appeals to uh a different strain in our psyche and it's not by itself any more irrational i don't think”
Rawls's religious impulses—despite his rejection of Christianity—manifest in his theory, which can be understood as a lengthy philosophical meditation on the gospel passage 'Whatsoever you do to the least of my brethren, that you do unto me,' attempting to derive Christian ethical conclusions from rational principles rather than faith.
“and here is where you see rawls's religious impulses coming out he's trying to restrain them but i think ultimately it doesn't work um in a way you could say that it seems to me what rawls is doing is uh creating a kind of logical unitarianism something that reasonable people could agree with but it doesn't move people emotionally and that's testimony to its kantian heritage he's looking for universal rules that apply equally to everybody and that's why he wants to say that we will be judged on the basis of how we treat the least among us”
Every moral theory attempts to modify human conduct by claiming something should be different from what is, except for Alexander Pope's position that 'everything that is is right,' making anyone who believes anything is wrong a moral theorist of some sort.
“every moral theory is trying to modify human conduct right so it's not unique to roles which means that however the world is and however people do behave uh moral theorists of every description are going to be saying are going to be saying that there's something different from what is and that's what should be and that you're all missing the boat right whether they're religious or rational um or more theorists with the possible exception of an alexander pope the poet who once said everything that is is right uh if you uh if you think that there's anything wrong with the world you're a moral theorist all right uh so we're stuck with that idea that we live in an imperfect world”
No single moral theory serves as a universal solution; instead, moral philosophers should maintain multiple frameworks (Aristotelian golden mean, Kantian categorical imperative, utilitarian greatest good) in their toolkit and deploy them contextually based on practical wisdom about which tool fits the situation.
“my point is that i don't think that roles if you push them to the point where we're going to do some minor harm and forego uh curing cancer i think that he's trapped in his own machine right most people most of the time are not going to sign on for that and i don't think that they're irrational or immoral i think there are limitations to every constructed moral and political theory which is not to say that they're not valuable i think rawls is really valuable i think aristotle's valuable i think kant and miller valuable but i think that they've oversold themselves um i think that what we need is to have all of those in our toolkit in judging moral ethics in politics but that uh we have to know what the right tool for the job is”
Natural law theory, tracing back to the Stoics, asserts that certain things are intrinsically good or bad; conventionalism, the alternative, leaves one with a legitimacy problem—how to justify one set of rules over another.
“there are a group of natural lawyers who try and employ the idea of natural law which goes all the way back to the stoics and says look there's certain things that are intrinsically good and intrinsically bad everybody else is one way or another stuck with being a conventionalist now being a conventionalist leaves you with a problem of legitimacy being a natural lawyer leaves you the problem of explaining how you got in touch with god take your pick everybody gets a problem that they can't handle”
Rawls is the founder of a benign gnostic cult focused on the well-being of the least among us, which makes a worthwhile contribution to political discussion at the same level as Aristotle's golden mean or Kant's categorical imperative, but is not the only or ultimate standard by which to judge morals and legislation.
“rawls is uh is the founder of what i would call a benign gnostic cult focused on the well-being of the least among us it makes a worthwhile contribution to our political discussions because we need somebody to look after such folks i'm not convinced that it's the only or the ultimate standard by which we judge morals in legislation but that it makes a contribution in the same way and at the same level as aristotle's gold and mean or uh kant's categorical imperative i think that's the case”
Utilitarianism, while useful as a moral tool in specific contexts like medical resource allocation, ran out of intellectual steam in England and the United States but thrived in Australia with philosophers like Peter Singer as its most prominent contemporary defender.
“utilitarianism sort of ran out of steam in a lot of places uh uh england itself of course but uh the united states as well i mean there was a there's always been an element of utilitarianism in american policy but uh the place where utilitarianism actually really thrived was australia right and peter singer is uh the most prominent in the line of australian utilitarians”
Disciplines like history, philosophy, literature, religion, and mythology are not truly separate; they are different vocabularies and approaches to the same underlying reality, and the distinction between disciplines exists primarily for administrative purposes (university salary accounting) rather than reflecting fundamental differences in subject matter.
“i think that the strict separation between disciplines is mostly for the benefit of accountants in other words the university has to figure out what department you're in so they know what line uh to pull from when they're paying your salary but the disciplines themselves are not they're all aspects of the same reality so history and philosophy and literature and religion and mythology are not really separate disciplines they're just different ways of looking at the same thing and what it involves is uh each of them has their own vocabulary and then within that each thinker develops his own lingo”
Rawls's theory would have been more convincing if it acknowledged limitations rather than claiming to be a complete moral framework; the actual problem is not that no single theory is universal but that Rawls did not adequately present the nightmare cases and exceptions that limit his framework's applicability.
“well yeah when i mean when i pointed out the you know every every moral and political theory has its nightmare cases and guys like me work and figure out what the net cases look like so the nightmare cases for alls are going to look like the nightmare cases for kant that he's going to turn down unjustly one might say a cure for cancer if it requires him to break the moral rule and treat someone badly suppose you have to we take a lottery in america or in the world eight billion people to find out that one in the eight billion is going to get killed as a result well the utilitarian says do the math obviously we should do this the kantian and the rosian say no we don't play that game so that i would be tempted to say that's an example of where being a strict contin or a strict roles in is going to become in my view excessive uh there i can't follow them all right”
The Western philosophical tradition has included the social contract (from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau) and Kantian ethics as two major elements that Rawls synthesizes to create his theory of justice as fairness.
“he's going to take elements of the western tradition like the social contract and also elements of kantian ethics in the sense that he likes clear and fast rules which are derived from carefully stated principles”
Rawls was influenced by President Clinton, who honored him; Rawls was a brilliant writer and important philosopher, but not all his arguments are entirely persuasive or convincing across all cases.
“he was really honored by president or president clinton uh in the later part of the 20th century”
John Rawls was born, lived, and died; he achieved high academic status and influenced political thought; he was a graduate of the Great Books program and earned degrees from University of Chicago and Columbia University.
“i always enjoy talking to him and i hope you enjoy listening to not only his lectures but our discussions at the end dr suguru is a professor he is a graduate of the great books program”
The webinar series is called 'Classics Revisited' and focuses on great works of political philosophy and literature; other sessions have covered John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism and Kant's foundations of metaphysics.
“we are continuing with our political philosophy conversations and talking about john rawls a theory of justice we're going to give everyone just a few moments to log in get settled”
Audience members are invited to submit questions in the Q&A panel during the webinar, which will be compiled and shared with attendees after the event.
“if you have specific questions for the professor or to um include into the discussion after the lecture please use that q and a panel it is a pop out panel”