Ethical Citizenship

In today’s class, we talked a lot about ethical citizenship. An American philosopher named John Rawls came up with his theory of a justice of fairness, called “A Theory of Justice”. He came to this conclusive theory by imagining moral agents in an original position, or before society was created. He imagined them behind a veil of ignorance and tried to determine the rules they would all agree upon as guidelines for society. In doing this, he came up with two significant principles: the Liberty Principle and the Difference Principle.

The Liberty Principle was based on ensuring equal rights to the most extensive set of basic liberties, which is compatible with a similar liberty for everyone else. This includes freedom of speech, press, religion, though, person, owning private property, the ability to hold office and vote, and the right of due process.

The Difference Principle was split into two parts. The social and economic inequalities are to be arranged such that:

a)     They are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged and

b)     They are attached to positions and offices open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

The example that we used in class was one in which a person who is disabled or unemployed can receive government aid if and only if he or she can prove that work is simply impossible to find or attain. This made me think of other possible examples that would apply, like child support. Even though it is not government aid, it is enforced by the government so that the parent that doesn’t have sole custody must pay the other parent monthly payments in order to help take care of the child. In order case, the child would be the “least advantaged” since he or she obviously cannot care for him or herself. Aside from being a happy, unified family (which is completely off topic), this child support would be of the greatest benefit to the child because it would help finance the numerous necessities a child requires. I may be way off topic with this example, but this just came to mind as we were in class discussing these ethical principles.