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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
A great deal of philosophical consideration has been given in recent years to the issue of justice. In large measure this effort has focused upon justice in . relation to social institutions, to the distributive question of disbursing social benefits on the one hand or punishments and burdens on the other hand. Essentially we may view justice as having two basic requirements. In the first place we need conditions assuring impartial treatment of individuals and, in the second place, conditions for reasonable treatment of individuals — as injustice may arise either if relevantly similar persons are accorded dissimilar treatment or if they receive similar but unreasonable treatment.
In this article I shall examine a number of devices which have been proposed to meet the first requirement — that of impartiality. Social theorists have pursued impartiality with strategies ranging from the disinterested Ideal Observer of many utilitarians to the ‘veil of ignorance’ conditions in John Rawls's revitalized contract theory. I shall demonstrate that the preoccupation with impartiality in social institututions has had an unfortunate consequence. It has obscured the original motive for impartiality and led to a misunderstanding of the concept.
1 Rawls, John A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), esp. pp. 17–22 and 136-42.Google Scholar
2 “The original position is so characterized that unanimity is possible; the deliberations of any one person are typical of all.” Rawls, p. 263.
3 Roderick Firth is the only philosopher I know who would deny general benevolence to the Ideal Observer, though after so doing he concedes, “The value of love and compassion to a judge …seems to lie in the qualities of knowledge and disinterestedness which are so closely related to them; and these two qualities…can be independently attributed to an ideal observer.” See “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952), p. 341.
4 James, Henry “Preface to The Portrait of a Lady” (New York: Scribner, 1908), p. vii.Google Scholar
5 Lewis, C. I. An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (Lasalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1946), p. 547.Google Scholar
6 Hare, R. M. Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 123.Google Scholar
7 Witness john Fowles in The French Lieutenant's Woman: “When Charles left Sarah on her cliff edge, I ordered him to walk straight back to Lyme Regis. But he did not; he gratuitously turned and went down to the Dairy.” Commenting a few sentences later on this exercise of autonomy, Fowles says, “I can only report … that the idea seemed to me to come clearly from Charles, not myself.” John Fowles, The French Lieutenant's Woman, chapter 13.