An Analysis To Rawls And Nozick’s Debates From The Perspectives Of Identity Justice And Difference Justice

The main characters in the debate about justice and moral philosophy are Rawlsand Nozick. Rawls believes that justice is the principal value of social institution andjustice means equality. So from Rawls’ point of view, the problem of freedom inwestern society has already been solved, now our attention should focus to the issues ofequality. And he points out that all the social products should be distributed equally,only in the case that some unequal distributions are benefit to the "least beneficiaries”.Nozick agrees Rawls’ viewpoint about that justice is the primary value of social system,but also he claims that justice is based on rights, and rights are inviolable. And Nozickalso shows his sympathy to the people for the inequality of society brings misfortune tothem, but he argues that inequality is not equal to injustice and equality doesn’t meanjustice.Nozick criticizes Rawls’ idea about solving the social equality by advocating moremultifunctional countries. In Nozick’s mind, he thinks all forms of redistribution are aviolation to people’s individual rights, meanwhile, he holds the viewpoint that the bestand ideal country is the one who has the less interference to its people. However, InRawls’ opinion, he believes all forms of inequality should be corrected and the onlyway to solve the social inequality is to have redistribution in a country. So from above,we can see that their focus on debates between Nozick and Rawls are the issues offreedom and equality. In these issues, Rawls tends to pay more attention to the socialequality and Nozick prefers to freedom. From their sharp and opposed viewpoints onjustice theory, they make us start to explore related issues and values.This thesis probes into the debates of the two scholars from the perspective ofidentity justice and differences justice. And also the author of this thesis points out thatRawls’s equality justice theory and Nozick’s super freedom of justice theory bothbelong to monistic justice theory and have their own defects, but identity justice anddifferences justice are dualism theory, it exceeds the justice theory and it’s asupplementary to them.Chapter One of this thesis mainly introduces the backgrounds,basic contents and the influences of Rawls’ and Nozick’s justice theory.In Chapter Two，first of all, the author of this thesis clarifies the definition ofjustice from two perspectives of deserved and justice theory, equality and justice theoryand dissertates simply the deserved and justice theory, equality and justice theory. Andthen, the author gives a comparative study of Rawls and Nozick’s justice theory.Meanwhile, the author pointes that the essence of the debates between two scholars isthe versus of freedom and equality. As the debates between freedom and equalitymainly are related in the economic field, issues of rational allocation of interest andburdens which concern the issues whether the endowment element should be participated into the allocation under the distribution justice. And there also a question,if we consider the endowment element, then how much we should put into in thedistribution.Chapter Three is the core of this thesis. In this chapter, the author systematicallydiscusses the identity justice and difference justice and the coordination mechanismbetween them. And then the author also answers the reason why identity justice anddifferences justice theory exceed Rawls’ and Nozick’s justice theories. From a certainsense, identity of justice theory corresponds Rawls’s equality and justice theory. Anddifferences justice theory, from a certain sense, corresponds Nozick’s super freedom ofjustice theory. The biggest disadvantage of both scholars’ theories lies in that they justonly discuss from one aspect, namely, justice. And their theories are not dynamic,history, comprehensive and systematic, so the author discusses the disadvantages ofRawls’ and Nozick’s justice theories in details. Finally, the author points out that thesynergy of justice, namely, the identity justice and difference justice theory is the rightdemands for the justice in modern society. With specific and realistic social issues, andguided on the collaborative mechanism and theory, the author analyzes how thecoordinated justice safeguards citizens’ fundamental rights of freedom and equality, aswell as how to achieve distribution justice and build a harmonious and well-orderedsociety.