Social Sciences in China (Chinese Edition)

No.10, 2013

The Rawls’ Problematic: Some Misunderstandings and Criticisms about the Justice Principle

(Abstract)

Zhang Guoqing

The publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971 soon triggered extensive debates over the interpretation of the principle of justice, leading to the Rawls’ problematic. Herbert Lionel Adolphus Hart, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin and other famous scholars all took their part in the debates, which became an important part of contemporary Western political philosophy. This problematic has partly caused a systematic misunderstanding of Rawls’ principle of justice by Chinese academics. In their main Chinese translations, “system,” “scheme” and other daily quantifiers used by Rawls in expounding the principle of justice were translated into tixi (regime), tizhi (institution), anpai (arrangement) or tushi (schemata), whence the emergence of concepts such as “free regime,” “free institution,” “free arrangement” or “free schemata” that are actually absent from Rawls’ original text. Some scholars attempt to use “reciprocal justice” to explain Rawls’ “justice of reciprocity”; others try to replace his principles of freedom and equality with the principles of survival, freedom and equality; and still more scholars attempt to determine the sequence of the principles of freedom and equality in terms of value. However, all these misunderstandings have deviated from Rawls’original intention in expounding the principle of justice. Therefore, we need to distinguish between a correct interpretation of Rawls’ ideas and a rational criticism of them, though his theory of justice may not necessarily be correct.