1. Professional Ethics (GEN301/PHI200) UNIT 3: JUSTICE AND ECONOMIC DISTRIBUTION
Handout #3
CLO#3 Evaluate the relation between justice, ethics and economic theories.

2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Explain the nature of justice.
2. Understand the principles of economic distribution.
3. Explore and analyze different approaches to justice.

3. THE NATURE OF JUSTICE Justice is one important aspect of morality.
Justice generally involves appeals to the related notions of fairness, equality, and rights.
Distributive justice concerns the principles appropriate for assessing society’s distribution of social benefits and burdens particularly wealth, income, status and power

4. THE NATURE OF JUSTICE
A number of rival principles have been proposed. Among the principles most frequently recommended as a basis of distribution is the principle of economic distribution.
Find the principle that best applies in the given situations.

5. PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC DISRIBUTION
Basis of distribution are:
To each an equal share
To each according to individual need
To each according to personal effort
To each according to social contribution
To each according to merit
We employ different principles of distributive justice in different circumstances.

6. APPROACHES TO JUSTICE IN THE WORKPLACE
The Utilitarian view
The Libertarian approach
Rawlsian Theory of justice

7. THE UTILITARIAN VIEW
For the utilitarian happiness is only the overarching value. Utilitarianism holds that the maximization of happiness ultimately determines what is just and unjust. Mill contended, more specifically, that the concept of justice identifies certain rules or rights, the upholding of which is crucial for promoting well-being and that injustice always involves violating the rights of some identifiable individual.

8. THE LIBERTARIAN APPROACH
It is a `philosophy of personal liberty- the liberty of each person to live according to his own choices, provided that he does not attempt to coerce others and thus prevent them from living according to their choices’.
The libertarian theory identifies justice with liberty, which libertarians understand as living according to our own choices, free from the interference of others.

9. THE LIBERTARIAN APPROACH
Libertarians stress that liberty should not be associated with coercing others.
They reject utilitarianism’s concern for total social well-being. Libertarians refuse to restrict individual liberty even if doing so would maximize social happiness.
Liberty takes priority over other moral concerns.

10. Nozick’s Theory of Justice
Robert Nozick a libertarian philosopher called his theory of economic justice the entitlement theory. This theory holds that the distribution of goods, money and property is just if people are entitled to what they have, that is if they have acquired their possessions without violating the rights of anyone else.

11. Nozick’s Theory of Justice
The main principles of Nozick’s entitlement theory:
A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in acquisition is entitled to that holding.
A person who acquires a holding according with the principle of justice in transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.

12. RAWLS’S THEORY OF JUSTICE
A Theory of Justice by John Rawls is generally thought to be the most influential work of the post- World War II period in social and political philosophy, at least in the English language. Rawls’s strategy is to ask what principles people would choose to govern their society if they were in the “original position”

13. RAWLS’S THEORY OF JUSTICE
The people in the “original position” would agree on two principles as the basic governing principles of their society. These are:
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

14. RAWLS’S THEORY OF JUSTICE
Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: firstly, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and secondly, they are to be to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged members of society.
Rawls rejected the utilitarianism because it could permit unfairness.