On The Criticism And Surpassing Of Rawls' Justice Theory To Utilitarianism

The Theory of Justice originated by John Rawls, who is a famous American moral and political philosopher in the present age, is an important milestone of western ethnics'development. Rawls devoted his life to his academic research. Endowed with his outstanding philosophic talent as well as the ability of analysis and testifying, he criticized and revised profoundly and deeply the former utilitarianism and intuitionism, which provides us with a brand-new and characteristic conception of justice, also meets his goal of replacing and transcending classical utilitarianism with a substantially new term of a social contract. In fact, over 30 years since his publication of A Theory of Justice in 1970s, various normative ethnical theories, which centers on social justice, has had an unprecedented prosperity in western ethnics'field. Before then, traditional utilitarianism has had predominance once in the western ethnics'field. As its own fatal theoretical weakness (Utilitarianism always regards the pure materiality as the role criterion of evaluating the moral value of something or one's behaviour), utilitarianism is always leading to narrow teleological theories. Because utilitarianism landed itself in a predicament which was difficult to be get rid of again and again in the present, Rawls's justice theory emerged and went with the tide of historical development in such a history setting. However, Rawls's transcending utilitarianism went through a prolonged period of time. Because in his early life he learnt from utilitarianism philosopher Walter Stace, Rawls could not get rid of the influence of utilitarianism in approaches to philosophy study until early 1950s. His ideas were inclined to a mix of intuitionism and utilitarianism. After issuing a series of papers and works, from Justice as Fairness, Distributive Justice to A Theory of Justice, he began to free himself from the shadow of utilitarianism, and set up his own theory of justice. This theory includes its pillars such as original position, the principles of justice, equality and freedom, distribution system and justice between generations, and also covers the hypothesis of the "veil of ignorance", the speculation of "reflective equilibrium", the improvement of "the good"and the analysis of "sense of justice". He is so meticulous about his writing that his works and theories can be labeled a grand and precise building. Rawls'held that utilitarianism should be criticized and revised at least in some respects: firstly, utilitarian considers goodness to be independent from fairness or right, and to realize its maximum increase; secondly, the principle of utilitarianism always see social choice as individual choice, and simply expand it to pursue "the most people's greatest benefits"; thirdly, utilitarian only concerns about the maximum increase of the total goodness, but not how to distribute it. In consequence, Rawls's theory of justice revises utilitarianism as follows: at the first place, it replaces utilitarianism's "extending the principle of individual choice to the society"with the principle of "fairness and equality of opportunity"; at the second place, it substitutes goodness which is independent from fairness, or fairness's preference for goodness's preference over fairness and right; the last, it uses the distribution system of "the principle of difference"to make up the shortness of that utilitarian only focuses on the pursuit of and satisfaction at maximum interests, regardless of the reasonable distribution of social interests. As a result, Rawls's theory of justice surpasses utilitarianism at least in the following respects: the first, on the society base of justice, Rawls regards mutual good as the result of a justice society, this viewpoint surpasses that of utilitarianism's regarding one's sympathy and mercy as the base of a justice society; the second, theoretically it extends realistic utility with possible utility, which surpasses the empirical views of the traditional utilitarianism.; the third, methodologically Rawls's new statement on classical contract eventually takes over empirical speculation of utilitarianism. There is no denying that the premise, process and purpose etc. of Rawls's justice theory are not removed entirely from the influence of utilitarianism. Firstly, the option for principle of justice is still subject to distribution of various basic interests; secondly, the maximum and minimum of principle of choice are still based on considering greatest utility; thirdly, in containing social cooperation, what Rawls takes into account is still to aim at greatest utility of the whole society. Moreover, in his theory there are some things which are hard to rationalize, for example, the inclination on equalitarianism in distribution is somewhat serious, the overemphasis of the importance and preference over civil rights and freedom of political rights, and too utopian in constructing his theory etc. For these, Rawls could not air his answers to satisfy academic circle, especially his opponents. As a western theory which is so extensive in scope and penetration in thoughts, Rawls's theory of justice not only exerts a broad and in-depth influence in western academic circle and society; but it plays an active role in how to coordinate the relation of freedom and equality, how to deal with fairness and efficiency on the condition of China's socialist market economy, how to pay closer attention to disadvantaged groups, and how to settle the problems between generations in sustainable development.