Justice exam Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Justice exam - Essay Example Rawls defines the capacity for a sense of justice as â€Å"the capacity to understand, to apply, and to act from the public conception of justice which characterizes the fair terms of cooperation†, which includes â€Å"a willingness...to act in relation to others on terms that they also can publicly endorse† (Garrett, 2005; Rawls, 1971; Rawls, 2001). There are two important elements here. First: To comply with this standard only requires conventional morality, knowing and obeying society's norms (Kohlberg, 1958; Crain, 1985). Postconventional morality, or the ability to think independently of society and question its norms, is not necessary. Second: Rawls is not saying that one always has to act on that willingness and capacity. A criminal could steal food knowing about society's norms but rejecting them for some higher good, or even steal money out of callousness, and still not lose their position as equal members of the community necessarily. Thus, many criminals and deeply flawed people are still part of Rawls' moral universe. Similarly, Rawls defines the conception of good as some idea of a goal or what is good in life and what is valuable, which usually is expressed as â€Å"a more or less determinate scheme of final ends, that is, ends [goals] that we want to realize for their own sake, as well as attachments to other persons and loyalties to various groups and associations† (Garret, 2005; Rawls, 1971). This is even less restrictive than the other condition. To satisfy this condition, one merely need have some idea of the good at some level of sophistication. One can disagree sharply with society and with Rawls and still be part of the moral universe. These ideas are important to later elements of Rawls' arguments about ethics because they express highly unrestrictive notions of who deserves to be treated as part of the community that nonetheless provide some discriminatory power above and beyond simply saying that all human beings ar e exactly equal. An utter sociopath with no capacity for morality and a stunted notion of what is good may not qualify for community membership and thus not be entitled to all of the rights of the community, for example. Rawls' idea of blind society design and the difference principle are also supported by this notion of the two goods. Rawls' moral psychology is connected to this notion in that it establishes a sort of species characteristic of moral and justice intuition. â€Å"The moral sentiments are a normal part of human life. One cannot do away with them without at the same time dismantling the natural attitudes as well† (Rawls, 1971). These elements were never fully completed, not least because the psychological evidence for them is limited and hard to establish, but later Rawlsian theorists like Baldwin did continue in that vein (). Baldwin argues that Rawls' notion of moral psychology has an inextricably social character: For Rawls, social behavior and rules are part of our innate moral intuitions. Rawls was far from alone in assuming that there is an innate psychological predisposition to moral concerns: Hume and Chomsky share this notion. â€Å"What's the source of such moral truisms? We don't know much more than David Hume did 250 years ago when he pointed out that our moral judgments are so rich and complex, and apply so readily to new cases, that they must derive from some fixed principles, and since we cannot acquire these from experience, they must be part of our nature (14). Rather like