Rawls vs Nozick (Ronald Dworkin)

Ronald Dworkin gives a very brief, introductory overview of John Rawls' "A Theory of Justice" and Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" in an interview with Bryan Magee from 1977. Although both wrote very influential works of political philosophy, they came to quite different conclusions. Rawls famously put forward a novel argument for his position which made use of a thought experiment involving a hypothetical contract. Unlike other social contract theories though, Rawls added the further twist that the bargainers must be ignorant about certain facts about themselves which could bias them in their own favor (e.g. their race, gender, class, age, talents, etc.). In this way, ignorance is used as a device to guarantee impartiality in deciding how societies should be structured. After all, one cannot rig things to benefit oneself at the expense of others if one doesn't know what one's personal interests are or what one's position in society will be. Rawls argued that behind this so-called "veil of ignorance" people would agree to two principles, the most interesting being the difference principle, which states that economic inequalities can only be justified if they are to the benefit of the worst off in society. However, such a view was rejected by Nozick, who argued from a starting point of absolute rights of property which cannot be violated without one's consent. Despite such a strong principle, Nozick argued that there can still be a kind of minimal state, what he called a "night-watchman state", which protects property and person. One way to think of the difference in views between Rawls and Nozick (albeit this may be overly simplistic and even misleading in certain respects) is that while Nozick privileges liberty and rights over equality and fairness, Rawls instead privileges that of equality and fairness. (My Summary)

This clip is of Ronald Dworkin discussing the political thought of John Rawls and Robert Nozick in a 1977 interview with Bryan Magee. It is an upload from the previous channel.

The full interview can be found here:    • Philosophy & Politics - Ronald Dworki...  

00:00 John Rawls
12:13 Robert Nozick

#Philosophy #Rawls #BryanMagee