The Theory of Justice

Moral and value judgments are viewed by many people as at base subjective, nonrational, and incapable of proof. In academic moral philosophy this view is reflected in the dominance in much of this century of what is known as meta-ethics-roughly, the logical analysis of moral language and of the structure of moral reasoning. Meta-ethics is concerned largely with philosophical questions about ethics rather than with substantive moral theories or issues themselves. This focus on meta-ethics, as well as the linguistic or analytic movement in philosophy generally, has vastly increased the philosophical sophistication and rigor of contemporary ethics. But on the debit side, moral and, in turn, political philosophers often have had very little to say directly relevant to the pressing moral issues of our time, and students as well as the general public have learned to look elsewhere for serious reflection on these issues. This is not to say that substantive moral and political philosophy has ceased to exist. Utilitarianism, the view that human actions and social institutions are morally justified to the extent that they tend to maximize the happiness of those they affect, has long engaged the interest and allegiance of many moral philosophers; it is a simple and systematic theory, capable of serving both as an individual ethic and as a social and political philosophy. But utilitarianism has the fatal drawbacks of conflicting at important points with most persons' considered moral judgments, particularly those on justice, and of failing to provide a firm basis for our western liberal political tradition with its emphasis