Criticism And Response: On The Hot Debates Of Rawls' Theory Of Justice

John Rawls is one of famous political philosophers incontemporary USA and one of representatives of neo-liberalism. HisA Theory of Justice has, since its publication, aroused a greatresounding in academia. His theory of justice has won extensiverecognition; meanwhile it was nevertheless criticized and challengedby several famous liberalists, communitarians and pluralists. On theone hand, Rawls gave his response to the criticisms and challenges tokeep defending his theory; on the other hand, he went further to reviseand perfects the system of his theory of justice.Rawls inherited the tradition of liberalism that lays stress on thevalue of liberty. But he was critical of its mere attachment to libertyand negligence of equality. He held that equality is a kind of value asimportant as liberty, and that it's possible to find solutions toinequality. He tried to reconcile the contradiction of liberty andequality by proposing two justice principles in political perspectivewhich are the one the principle of equal liberty, and the other that ofequal opportunities and reasonable difference.Rawls' theory of justice has been criticized from multiplestandpoints. Robert Nozick concentrated on criticizing Rawls'difference principle with an intense tendency of equality, consideringthat every request for equality is a violation of individual rights. Hisdoctrine of "justice in holdings" is a kind of extreme theory ofindividual rights. The essence of their debates is the dispute betweenthe absolute libertarian preference and egalitarian preference withinliberalism. Ronald Dworkin thought that liberty and equality don'tconflict with each other at all, and he specifically pointed that the coreof his theory is equality as a concept much more abstract andfundamental than liberty and that the defense of liberalism is just thedefense of equality. The focus of his debates with Rawls is the importance degree and realization means of equality with thepreceded affirmation of liberty. Juergen Habermas agreed to the basicprinciples and ideas in Rawls' theory of justice. His criticism of Rawlsis mostly technical. Their divergences lie in the design of originalposition and the deduction of two principles of justice.The debate between Rawls and communitarians such as AlastairMacIntyre and Michael Sandel is focused on the relation of ego tocommunity. The Communitarians criticize that Rawls's 'ego' isisolated from history and community and therefore is contentless andalso illusive. The Communitarians emphasize that the community hasthe supreme value and that the ego must stay within the community, itis otherwise meaningless. However, Rawls thought that he didn'tisolate ego from community and that community takes hold ofconsiderable importance in his theory.The dispute between Rawls and justice pluralists such as MichaelWalzer and David Miller are focused on monism or pluralism in theprinciples of justice. Rawls insisted that it's possible to find a politicalconsent accepted by all citizens, namely, the two justice principles,despite of the fact of rational pluralism; whereas the pluralists heldthat there aren't such universal principles of justice on earth and theprinciples of justice are of pluralism rather than of monism.The great dispute in political philosophy revolving aroundRawls' theory of justice can be regarded as a violent conflict amongvarious schools of justice theory. Although it is based on capitalistsystems, much of its valuable academic resources may offer theimportant theoretical support and practical guidance to thedevelopment of political philosophy as well as to the undergoingdemocracy construction in today's China.