More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.com
74
john rawls: his life and theory of justice
and should be disregarded for this reason. But this is a bad argument. Even if the distribution of natural assets is fixed, this distribution can be taken into account in assessing a distribution of social primary goods. A public criterion of justice would then assess the well-being of a disabled person as being below that of an able-bodied person with the same social primary goods. It would do so because the disabled person is likely to be less successful in his or her pursuit of the three fundamental interests—both because of the additional expenses (wheelchair, hearing aid) this disability makes necessary and because of the handicap that remains even with such compensatory expenditures. Looking at each citizen’s share of social primary goods alone, Rawls’s public criterion may seem to miss important components of wellbeing as the parties understand it. In response, Rawls can point out that he has explicitly bracketed the problem of chronic illnesses and disabilities. And he can adduce the further assumption that citizens, capable of taking part in education, work, and politics over a complete life, have access to adequate insurance against temporary illnesses and disabilities. There are, however, other natural goods that are unequally distributed from birth and affect the well-being of citizens: native intelligence, memory, perceptual acuity, energy and stamina, quick reflexes, various special talents (for music, mathematics, sports, and the like), personal appearance, and many others besides. Rawls appreciates this fact and explicitly recognizes such natural primary goods (T J 54). But his proposed public criterion of justice assesses individual well-being in terms of social primary goods alone. One could give a principled justification for this exclusion: Social institutions should not be designed with an eye to the resulting distribution of natural endowments but should allow this distribution to emerge from the free choices of consenting couples. Newly born citizens can then be regarded as bringing their natural endowments with them into society. They do not, of course, deserve their natural characteristics and are not in any way responsible for having them, but this does not mean that society must take responsibility for them and hence organize itself so as to compensate for natural inequalities. Society is responsible not for the justice of the universe but only for that of its own social institutions. It should therefore concern itself only with the goods whose distribution is regulated or intentionally affected by its social institutions. Such a principled justification—which Rawls does not offer himself—occupies a plausible midpoint between two extremes. Some
Fore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com