There are two main concepts in ethics, namely justice and kindness. Teleology defines goodness as something independent of righteousness, and holds that goodness and justice are not the same, that goodness is not necessarily justified, and that justice is not necessarily good. In addition, teleology defines justice as something that increases goodness, that is, just behavior is behavior that can increase goodness. This means two things. First, in teleology, what is good can be distinguished by common sense intuition, while justice means maximizing what is considered good. Second, teleology enables a person to judge whether something is good or not without reference to what is right. Good is good, and whether it is right or not, good and right are separated. Because teleology in the classical sense only regards something, whether abstract or concrete, as good, and does not regard the distribution of all kinds of good as a kind of good, the problem of distribution belongs to the appropriate conceptual category.

According to teleology, different definitions of goodness have produced different theories aiming at goodness, such as perfectionism, hedonism and happiness. And utilitarianism regards the satisfaction of desire as good. Therefore, for utilitarianism, no matter what environmental factors, as long as it can satisfy individual rational desires, it constitutes an appropriate condition for social cooperation, that is to say, utilitarianism does not care about social systems and forms, as long as it can be maximized. As for the distribution problem in society, it is only to produce maximum satisfaction, that is, distribution: society must distribute its means of satisfaction-whether it is rights, obligations, opportunities, privileges or various forms of wealth, in order to achieve the greatest possible value. Utilitarianism regards society as a whole and a person as a person, so it can be seen that when everyone realizes his own interests, he will automatically measure his losses according to his own gains. Since a person can act very appropriately to achieve his best interests and get as close as possible to his reasonable purpose, a society can also act according to this principle.

Here we can see that utilitarianism is very different from Rawls' theory of justice. First of all, utilitarianism does not care about distribution in society, but only about the satisfaction of the greatest good. How to distribute is also determined by the satisfaction of the greatest good. Among them, human freedom, equality and human dignity are not the main objects of utilitarianism, but only the means to satisfy the greatest goodness. Each individual is just a tool to satisfy the overall goodness. However, Rawls' theory of justice regards human freedom and equality as the primary conditions that a social system needs to meet. Rawls' theory of justice is not teleology, but deontology. Therefore, it is not for the purpose of satisfying the greatest goodness, and it is believed that human equality and freedom should be respected to the greatest extent. Man is not a tool, but an end.

6. Some related controls.

Although utilitarianism holds that freedom and rights are only the means to achieve the ultimate good, many philosophers and common-sense beliefs hold that the requirements of freedom and rights take precedence, if not absolute. Based on natural rights, everyone is inviolable. It is unjust to infringe on others for the benefit of some people. The priority principle of choosing justice as the original state is the proof of this belief.

As far as the difference between utilitarianism and justice as fairness is concerned, firstly, although justice is very important to utilitarians, the difference between utilitarianism and contract theory is obvious. Contract theory fully recognizes the belief that justice takes precedence, while utilitarianism only interprets justice as a useful illusion in social communication.

Second, utilitarianism extends the principle of individual choice to society, while justice as fairness holds a contractual view, that is, the principle of social choice, that is, the principle of justice itself, is the goal of the original contract. Because the existence of individuals with different goals is a basic feature of human society, it is unreasonable to extend the principle of individual selection to the regulation principle of human associations. It is dangerous to erase the differences and just seek approval. Although it has not been proved whether utilitarianism will be chosen in the original state, some people may think that contract theory will eventually become a more circuitous proof of utilitarianism. But Rawls assumes here that people in the primitive state will reject utilitarianism and adopt the two principles of justice he mentioned. Rawls believes that no matter how reasonable the principle of individual consultation is, no matter how fair the desire system established by the fair observer assumed by utilitarianism is to everyone, this principle applicable to individuals should not be extended to the principle of social choice.

Third, utilitarianism is teleology, while justice as fairness is deontology. The deontology does not stipulate good without deviating from justice, or it does not explain justice by maximizing good. Rawls emphasized here that although deontology is not teleology, the legitimacy of institutions and behaviors is not independent of their results, and deontology should also consider the results of their institutions and behaviors. But even if the judicial system will maximize good, it can only be counted as a coincidence. As a kind of fairness and justice, the maximization principle of utilitarianism has not been taken into account, and the maximization principle is completely redundant for it.

Third, utilitarianism regards the satisfaction of any desire as valuable. When calculating the maximum surplus of satisfaction, they don't care what these desires are, but as fairness and justice, they are not. In fairness and justice, behind the veil of ignorance, people accepted the principle of equality and freedom in advance, which is contrary to this principle. Here, the concept of justice takes precedence over the concept of goodness, which violates the benefits that justice itself can obtain. In other words, utilitarianism regards people's desires as established, no matter what they are, they just look for ways to satisfy them according to this established desire. Justice, as fairness, has restricted these desires from the beginning, only acknowledging some desires that satisfy justice, while other desires that violate justice, the principle of justice and the concept of equality are restricted. Among justice as fairness, justice takes precedence over goodness is the basic feature of this view of justice. This basic feature provides some clear standards for the design of basic structures.

Fourthly, utilitarianism relies heavily on natural facts and accidental factors in human life when deciding what kind of moral quality should be encouraged in a just society, while the moral ideal of fairness and justice is deeply rooted in the first principle of ethical theory. This is also a characteristic of the opposition between the view of natural rights and utilitarianism in traditional contract theory.

Generally speaking, Rawls believes that in the theory of justice as fairness, a well-organized society is conceived as a mutually beneficial cooperative system, which is regulated by the principle that people choose in the original state of fairness. Classical utilitarianism imagines a well-organized society as an effective management of social resources, which can satisfy the overall desire system caused by impartial observers to the maximum extent from many established individual desire systems.

7. Intuition

Rawls believes that one of the most common characteristics of intuitionism is that it contains an untraceable primitive principle, and those primitive principles can only be measured fairly by asking ourselves. Once the level of general principles is reached, intuitionists think that there is no higher standard to measure these general principles. In other words, intuitionism is based on human intuition, and intuition is the most basic thing. The principles we get by our intuition can't be traced back, and there is no other standard to measure the principles formed by intuition. Therefore, the theory of intuitionism has two characteristics: 1, which consists of several initial principles, which may conflict with each other in some special circumstances and give opposite instructions. They do not include any clear methods and rules by which these principles can be measured. We just rely on intuition to determine the measurement. Rawls said that he would not consider the epistemological problems in intuitionism theory, such as the concepts of justice and kindness can not be analyzed, and the properly summarized moral principles express the self-evident proposition of legal moral requirements.

Here Rawls mentioned a dichotomy based on summation-division, which belongs to intuition. This dichotomy has two principles. First of all, the basic structure of society should be designed to produce the greatest good in the sense of ensuring the maximum net balance to be met; The second is the average distribution satisfaction. The first principle is the utility principle. As an efficiency standard, it is to create a greater sum as much as possible. The second principle, as a standard of justice, restricts the pursuit of total welfare and makes the distribution of benefits tend to be equal. As far as social distribution is concerned, this method is intuitive as a guiding principle, because there is no more priority rule to determine how these two principles balance each other. Rawls explained the balance between these two principles with the indifference curve of economics. In the process of balancing these two conflicting principles, intuitionism holds that we must finally reach several initial principles, and for these initial principles, we can only judge which is better by intuition.

Here, the problem raised by intuitionism for fairness and justice is: For some conflicting principles, because they cannot be explained as the initial principles and cannot be traced back as the most basic concepts, we can't sort out a batch of conflicting initial principles in the distribution of social interests, judge their advantages and disadvantages, and can't explain them, so we can only rely on intuition to deal with and judge them.

Finally, the striking feature of intuitionism is not that they are teleological or deontological, but that they particularly emphasize our intuitive ability, which is not guided by identifiable constructive moral standards. Intuitionism denies that there is any useful and clear answer to the priority problem.

(The following is taken from Douban reading)

[1] Intuitionism = a set of moral theories with untraceable original principles. Two characteristics: (1) This set of principles may conflict with each other under specific circumstances; (2) In the case of conflict, there is no clear rule to measure the priority of the principle. [2] The epistemological aspect of intuitionism is not the focus of investigation. [3] Intuitionism takes many forms according to the universality of its principles. Intuitionism of common sense, each theory is applicable to a special practical problem, and each problem needs to balance various conflicting specific standards. For example, the concept of salary needs to be in the aspects of technology, training, effort, responsibility, work hazards and workers' needs. Each party may have a different balance according to its own interests, which is also influenced by customs and current expectations, so different people have different standards. In order to reach an agreement and provide reasons, it is necessary to make a trade-off at a more general level. [4] If we turn specific issues into the perspective of all social policy objectives, we can go beyond the compromise of real interests and make more coherent arrangements, such as distributing wages according to performance from the consideration of incentive efficiency and distributing benefits from the consideration of meeting basic needs, but the balance between various policy objectives still depends on intuition. [5] Philosophical principles balance the purpose of social policy from the most universal principles. The principle of benefit is juxtaposed with the principle of fairness, and both principles require the maximization of benefit or the maximization of average distribution under the condition that other conditions remain unchanged. [6] However, the juxtaposition of these two principles is intuitive and does not provide a priority rule to balance these two principles. Then there are various ways of balance, forming a series of indifference curves. [7] The points on different curves represent different degrees of justice, while the points on the same curve have the same degree of justice, but the slopes are different, and different slopes represent the relative urgency of implementing the two principles. [8] However, different indifference curves can also be proposed for these two principles, representing different evaluations of the relative urgency of these two principles. The advantage of intuitionism is that it clearly puts forward the principles that need to be reconciled, but people can only expect a similar balance of principles. [9] Intuitionism insists that we can only rely on intuition to balance the conflict of ultimate principles, and there is no further rationality standard to resort to. [10] Intuitionism holds that ethical judgments cannot be completely derived from principles, otherwise they can only get trivial formal principles or resort to oversimplified and wrong principles. [1 1] Intuitionism can be either deontology or teleology, but it is still unique in that it can appeal to intuition in moral judgment.

8. Priority issues

It is impossible to give any constructive answer to the priority question, that is, when faced with conflicting moral order and conflicting principles of justice, so we can only turn to our intuition here. The utilitarian solution to this problem is to allow only a single principle, and there is only one fundamental standard, that is, the utilitarian principle. Facing up to the priority problem and avoiding relying on intuition as much as possible is the greatest charm of utilitarianism.

For this problem, Rawls believes that, firstly, there is nothing necessarily unreasonable to resort to intuition, and secondly, the existence of certain principles is inevitable. So we can rely on intuition, but we should rely on intuition as little as possible. In Justice as Fairness, the fact is that the principles of justice are selected in the original state, and it is necessary to determine the priority of these principles in order to establish a consistent agreement to rule on their common requirements. And because everyone's intuitive judgment on priority issues is not universally the same, we need a principle to measure priority issues. It can be assumed that all parties in the original state will try to reach a contract, which is used to balance the principle of justice.

Then, Rawls put forward another method to solve the priority problem, that is, to put these principles into a dictionary-like sequence, which requires that a principle be considered by us only after those principles that precede it are fully satisfied or not adopted. In this way, this continuous sequence avoids the trouble of measuring all the principles. Rawls called this arrangement: the finite maximum principle. But there are still problems here, and the problem of principle priority has not been solved, that is, how to measure which principle should be placed before another principle? Rawls believes that the principle in the previous sequence can be defined as a relatively specialized principle with a relatively small scope. Unless the former principle has limited application and limited requirements that can be met, the latter principle will never play a role. For example, the principle of equality and freedom can take precedence, but the principle of utility cannot, because if the principle of utility takes precedence, its subsequent standards will become useless and redundant.

Generally speaking, there are two traditional ways to deal with priority issues, namely, 1 adopts a single general principle, which is more intuitive, while Rawls proposed a third way, that is, adopts multiple principles arranged in dictionary order. Rawls thinks that although the dictionary order can't be very accurate, it can provide a general explanation for some special but meaningful situations.

(The following is taken from Douban reading)

[1] Classical utilitarianism recognizes the priority issue and holds that there is only one ultimate standard, namely the utilitarian principle. [2] It is not necessarily unreasonable to resort to intuition on priority issues, but it should be minimized and the priority rules should be summarized as much as possible. [3] In justice as fairness, intuition is subject to the following restrictions: (1) In the initial position, all parties are rational and think that all principles should be clearly agreed, so they will definitely try to reach an agreement on how to balance the principles of justice; Because the principle does not depend on self-evident, the reasons for the principle of justice it puts forward will also provide guidance on how to balance the principle of justice. [4] (2) Principles can be arranged in dictionary order to avoid trade-offs. The premise of this arrangement is that the prior principle must be limited and its requirements must be clear. [5] (3) Problems can be more limited, and moral judgment can be replaced by wise judgment. In justice as fairness, we should first pick out a social position as a place to judge, and then make a wise judgment on the interests of the representatives at this point. This avoids the difficulty of intuitive summation-allocation dichotomy. [6] We don't pursue completely avoiding intuition, but just want to put forward a concept of justice, which can make our considered judgments consistent. From the original state, it is the rational will of all parties in the original state that realizes such a concept of justice, and the principle is chosen, and the principle precedes the moral fact, so the complexity of the moral fact is determined by the will of all parties in the original state. [7] To solve the priority problem, we should either adopt a comprehensive single principle or sort the principles in the dictionary.

9. Review of moral theory

(The following is taken from Douban reading)

[1] puts forward the theme of this section: the essence of moral theory. Explain what is "considered judgment" in reflective balance and the reasons for introducing this concept. [2] Our moral cognition and action ability related to a sense of justice are very complicated. [3] Moral theory first tries to describe our moral ability. Describing our moral ability lies in listing a set of principles for our moral judgment. [4] Describing moral ability is similar to describing language ability, which is bound to be theoretically constructed and will go beyond the norms used in daily life. Therefore, in principle, the initial position and the initial consistent idea are not redundant. [5] The so-called "thoughtful judgment" is a judgment made without hesitation, intimidation, anger, secret profit and other factors, which is suitable for the display of a sense of justice. [6] The reason why we need to "reflect on the balance" is because although the purpose of moral theory is to put forward a set of principles suitable for our considered judgments, even these considered judgments themselves may be distorted, so we may adjust some inconsistent judgments after getting a set of principles, and so on. Finally, the balance between the two is a process of reflection. [7] Moral philosophy is related to a thorough reflection balance, which must face all possible descriptions and arguments of the sense of justice, while this book is limited to examining several views of justice left by the tradition of moral philosophy, trying to prove that justice as fairness is the highest priority in the original position, and it is also the most in line with our thoughtful judgment. [8] Reflective balance has different possibilities for different people, and it may not necessarily converge into one in the end. The work of this book is to sum up all possible justice concept systems into several main ideas and examine them from the perspective of reflective balance between the author and the reader. [9] Emphasize that moral theory is theory: face facts, make assumptions, summarize and explain facts. Therefore, the definition and logical analysis of moral concepts do not occupy a special position in it, which is not enough to support a substantive theory. [10] With the accurate and substantial explanation of the concept of morality, it will open up a new way of thinking for the problem of meaning analysis and defense, similar to the role played by the new logical system in the fields of logic and mathematical philosophy. [1 1] As a theory of fairness, justice is preliminary and incomplete, but it is important to find the most correct direction from several existing alternatives. [12] Justice as fairness often contrasts with utilitarianism, partly as an auxiliary explanation, and partly because utilitarianism is the mainstream theory and the clearest and most systematic theory so far, and no other theory can match it in this respect. [13] The theory of this book should be understood as a framework guide, and the concepts of justice principle, priority rule and initial state are all aimed at putting forward solvable problems more clearly. As long as we can clear our minds, reduce differences and enhance consistency in the process, our temporary roughness can be forgiven.