A Research On Brian Barry's Justice As Impartiality

There is little doubt that the justification of justice has been a significant theme in western philosophy of politics and ethics.Social justice has become one of centeral topics and theoretical hot points especially since famous American philosopher Rawls' s A Theory of Justice was published in 1970 s.Among all theories,contemporary British philosopher Brain Barry's social justice gains its own representativeness and influence.His work Justice as Impartiality is a kernel one which systematically expounds his thoughts on social justice.Barry's justice as impartiality basicly relies on the mutual conflicting idea of goodness itself,suggests to provide a necessary solution to mutual contradiction through consensus principles which are based on rational agreements.In the face of different conceives of goodness,justice as impartiality appeals to find out numbers of common fair judgement routines in conflicting ideas of goodness in the society to make sure the realization of rational-agreements-based promise,in order to give all people fair opportunities for development as well as maximize persuasion of self goodness.This theory refuses to admit the existence of any certain authoritative goodness in the society as well as the first place of the benefit and concern of behavioral subject.However,it regards emphasis on the existence of a moral system which can solve different conflicts in rational,neutral and equitable solutions,set up justice rules for people's fair behavior and build up a just environment.Fundamentally,Barry's justice as impartiality gives people enough space for their autonomous life under the requirement of the goodness,reveals the basic concept of different ideas in the question of goodness in the view of liberalism.Barry's justice as impartiality is not only closely related with the previous theories of justice human ones kept,but also reveals his basic requirement and glorious hope established on a higher abstract understanding of social justice.Justice as impartiality inherited liberalism,contractualism,rationalism,constructivism and altruism,his effective inheritance and criticaldevelopment to Rawls' commitment constraint and Scanlon's reasonable refusal especially highlights the feature and value proposition of this theory.There's no doubt that justice as impartiality,which is established on the foundation of rational articles of agreement,starts from the motivation of fairness,provides the achievement of liberal and equal common-admitted principles with available routines,at the same time,guarantee the fairness of the consequence in essence though impartial decision-making process while a partisan system installation will keep its stability and legitimacy.Hence,the only widely-accepted common clause of justice as impartiality would be,treat everyone the same.While elaborating his theory of justice as impartiality,Barry compared and denied another two kinds of justice,Justice as mutual advantage and Justice as reciprocity.In Barry's view,both of them have some disadvantages as their inner incoherence will result in instability.The observance of rules becomes the main measures for the stronger to gain benefit,which will finally lead to the “prisoners' dilemma”,the partisan motivation will turn fairness into fairy tales.Once it is profitable for someone to break a rule,the present moral restraint would lose its potency.As a more advanced and attractive theory of justice,justice as impartiality has a special structure of insurance game,it seize the equality in some extent,behave in reasonable way becomes a necessary procedure of the realization of social justice as impartiality asks to treat all the relevance the same,what they do is exactly their reason requires.This dissertation expounds the basic feature and theoretical essence of justice as impartiality in detail through literature research,historical approach,comparative analysis and empirical application,reveal the contemporary implication and value to the construction and practice of transforming China social justice on the foundation of a deep discussion of its function on the aspect of social public affairs.This dissertation contains a brief introduction,six characters of specific research and conclusion.In the part of Introduction,a general illustration of Barry's life and his theory on social justice has been given,the reason and value of the topic as well as aim and significance of this study have been established on the foundation of a grasp on his political ideas and value requirement,while deliberate systematically and deeply on justice of impartiality on the basis of systematical analysis on the status quo in and abroad through literature research,historical study comparative analysis and demonstration adhibition,to excavate its theoretical connotation and practical value,and explain the creativity and difficulties of this research.Chapter one,the realistic background and theoretical origin of justice as impartiality.The understanding of a glorious life develops from a unified cognition and value requirement to diversity and diverse interpretation,in actual society,people's persuasion to freedom and equality becomes a motivative factor of self-realization and the multivariant development of the whole society.The coexistence of diversity and heterogeneity has been widely admitted in modern society.However,because of the comprehensive disability of the reason caused by the diversity of ideas on goodness,social divergence and conflict keeps contain in various political affairs as well as daily life,and pose challenges to a fine social order.Barry's justice as impartiality was raised exactly under this realistic background.While explaining its advantages and features,this theory fully shows its theoretical origin,the reasonable inheritance of the history of liberalism and modern contractarian,based on this foundation,it constructed the theory on justice and impartiality in the way of rational contracts.Chapter two,introduction on justice as impartiality.In this chapter,we put forward the theory of justice as impartiality on the foundation of denying justice as mutual advantage and justice as reciprocity.Comparing with the other two theories above,justice as impartiality sticks to the equal rights and interests of every side in the agreement form an equitable motivation,eliminate agreements which are achieved based on superior position or false conviction.Justice as impartiality have main features including the equaltreating of goodness,the resorting to fairness instead of goodness,the autonomy of decision and the diversity of consequence requirement.In justice as impartiality,any privilege assertion or partisan behavior are not compatible with its justice principle.Hence,impartiality is playing the role of a judge.According to the requirement of common sense morality,fairness is rooted in impartiality,but impartiality doesn't play the kernel role,instead,it is opened to all ideas of goodness,impartiality holds the responsibility of moral encumbrance,which is,the observe of principle.Such kind of equal treatment construct the idea of impartial goodness.As it treats everything the same,the idea of impartial goodness is not limited in the scope of what human benefit concerns,Barry regards anthropocentrism,zoocentrism and biocentrism as three widely-ranged impartiality-based theoretical category.In realistic society,these three ideas of impartial goodness can all lead to various kinds of ideas of conflicts,and impartiality is to treat their coexistence correctly.Thus,as reasonable situation,impartiality as consequentialism will respect all kinds of conflicts and preserve the proper beneficial requirement of everyone.Chapter three,construction and realization of justice as impartiality.In this chapter I expound the theoretical construction and realistic routine of justice as impartiality.The construction of this theory profit from Rawls' second stage “affirmatory restrain” cooperative foundation and Scanlon's reason construction.To the whole construction,Barry regards Scanlon's reason construction as the best one to show the basic requirement of justice as impartiality.Thus,justice as impartiality asks everyone's opinion to be concerned,the principle of justice is the principle which would be widely accept by people who accept it on the foundation of equal respect,otherwise,it could be reasonably refused based on reason.Resorting to fairness,obeying procedural justice could be thought as the realistic routine of justice as impartiality,and the principle of impartial justice protect people's legitimacy of impartial behavior,in specific political affairs,it adopts a constitutionalism and superincumbent routine,in many situations,it could impose restrictionson the content of impartiality,but it has to give the choice of impartial consequence to fair decision making procedure.In this sense,Barry distinguishes first-order impartiality and second-order impartiality,in Barry's view,first-order impartiality is not only unnecessary,but also should be the motivation of justice,and the first-order impartiality should,meanwhile,be constructed with the scope of second-order impartiality.Still in virtue of Rawls' theoretical construction and Scanlon's,this chapter expounds the essence of second-order impartiality in justice as impartiality in detail.Chapter four,neutrality justification of justice as impartiality.This chapter firstly proceed with the special assumption of Maclntyre's criticize which the neutrality of justice as impartiality is actually a kind of “partisan”,which contains liberal individualism.Mainly refutes Maclntyre's criticize of“partisan”,proves the realistic existence of liberal individualism neutrality,but not such special liberal individualism goodness which Maclntyre assumed.What's more,I systematically analyzed the liberalism idea about goodness,which is,autonomous goodness and desire,a complacent idea of goodness.In liberalism,autonomous goodness doesn't contain neutrality,they are actually mutual conflict;desire-satisfying indeed generated neutrality,but it serves a kind of preference,the existence of goodness in utilitarianism has essential difference with the inherent neutrality of justice as impartiality.Last but not least,through comparing desire-satisfying utilitarianism neutrality and justice as impartiality neutrality,reveal the neutral essence of justice as impartiality,recurrence to fairness is not goodness,and prove the neutral legitimation of justice as impartiality through partisan system design.Chapter five,misunderstandings on justice as impartiality and Barry's response.Since Barry raised justice as impartiality,in the field of political and moral philosophy,sustain controversy has been underway between the defender of impartiality and those who take an anti-impartiality side.Among them,Williams,Kohlberg and some feminisms are main representatives of the anti-impartiality.Williams' misunderstanding and criticize concentrates on the equating of Kant's philosophy and utilitarianism with a variant formwhich contains general first-order impartiality.In Barry's view,the anti-impartiality camp represented by Williams have never achieved their target,actually,this is conflicting,Kantism and utilitarianism stick to the meaning on the level of second-order impartiality while the anti-impartiality's proposition is no more,in proper sense,Kantism or utilitarianism of Bentham or John Mill.Meanwhile,Kohlberg also made a mistake like Williams which was accepted by feminism,and criticize impartiality in “Women-concerning ethics”.After replying Kohlberg's misunderstanding,Barry pointed out that justice as impartiality is not conflicting with “Women-concerning ethics”,it is in fact a fake conflict,actually,they ought to be complementary in reciprocal admission.Chapter six,value and limitation of justice as impartiality.Comprehensive evaluation of justice as impartiality is the soul to general cognition and essential grasp.Firstly,evaluating the theoretical value of justice a impartiality mainly includes three aspects: the division of two categories theories of justice,partisan systematical setting and real rendering of value of freedom and equality.What justice as impartiality pursues is a kind of substantial justice instead of justice in formal,an equitable decision-making procedure can guarantee the impartiality of decision consequence,in routine and systematical settings,this theory ensures the impartiality of personal behavior and the reasonable requirement of goodness of oneself,maintains the fundamental value of liberty and equality in liberalism.Secondly,analyses the theoretical limitation of justice as impartiality,which also includes three aspects,justification of justice and fragility of motivation,excessive emphasis of universalism and the inner lack of justification.In the evident procedure to substantial impartiality of justice as impartiality,although realized through procedural justice,Barry ignored the verifiable integrity of impartiality in form and give this connection to the impartial intention of people.Actually,it is hard for people to do it as it is hard to control whether people hold an impartial intention,the lack of understanding and concerning to the particularity of social justice,as well asa clear explanation to rationality,also makes justice as impartiality too optimistic in practical procedure,which is too idealistic.Last but not least,the conclusion.In this part I briefly expound the inspiring meaning of justice as impartiality to modern transforming Chinese social justice construction and practice from completing the constitution,to construct law-governing government and guarantee people's right;enhance institution construction,ensure the real appearance of social justice through institutional justice.