Hudson, Adam;
(2025)
Rawls, Relations and Justice.
Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Social relations have more than just an instrumental significance for those party to them. The way we relate to others or our standing in society matters a great deal in shaping how our lives go. This thought motivates relational approaches to justice: those that view the structure of relations that exist in society as fundamentally what justice concerns. Such approaches, especially when conceived on egalitarian terms (“relational egalitarianism”), are presented in contrast to distributive approaches to justice. This thesis examines the interplay between distributive values, relational values, and the demands of justice. It explores how compelling the relational critiques of distributive justice are and whether this should lead us to adopt an approach to justice that is relational tout court. I argue that such a narrow construal of the demands of justice is misguided. What’s more, viewing justice as relational tout court makes the same mistake as distributive approaches to justice by committing to a principle of redress—the idea that injustices must be rectified so as to bring about either a just set of social relations or a just distribution of resources. This observation is used to motivate a Rawlsian approach to justice that takes the fundamental organising principle of a just society to be establishing fair cooperation between individuals via the basic structure. This Rawlsian approach rests on establishing just background conditions from which individuals can relate fairly and in ways that respect their fundamental freedom and equality. The conclusion is that this approach can accommodate for the compelling aspects of the relational approach to justice—in particular, the idea that justice must account for how people treat and regard others—without the baggage. What’s more, I argue that a Rawlsian account can also accommodate for distributive values which are central for background justice in society.
| Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | M.Phil.Stud |
| Title: | Rawls, Relations and Justice |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Dept of Philosophy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10213963 |
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