Understanding Justice: Moral Luck and Political Philosophy

Every Sunday, a new lecture. Our meeting starts at 9:00 AM with a friendly conversation, then a dialogue at 9:15 AM, and a Q&A discussion follows.

This week, we turn to two modern giants of political philosophy who, despite their shared liberal foundations, arrive at radically different conclusions about what makes a society just: John Rawls and Robert Nozick.

We begin with John Rawls, who argues for distributive justice and the fairness of the outcome. His powerful "original position" thought experiment—where people decide the rules of society from behind a "veil of ignorance" regarding their own status—leads to two principles: equal basic liberties for all, and the "difference principle," which permits social and economic inequalities only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society. For Rawls, a robust, active, social-democratic state is necessary to intervene and ensure genuinely equal opportunity and that basic liberties hold fair value.

Next, we move to Robert Nozick, who emphasizes the justice of the process and individual entitlements. His "entitlement theory" focuses strictly on justice in acquisition, transfer, and rectification. Nozick directly counters Rawls's emphasis on final outcomes by arguing that as long as the initial distribution is just, any subsequent distribution arising from free, voluntary transfers is also just. He illustrates this with his famous Wilt Chamberlain argument: if millions of people voluntarily choose to give a quarter each to a basketball star for entertainment, the resulting massive inequality is just because every step was consensual. Any state intervention to redistribute that wealth through taxation for social programs is an unjust violation of the right to self-ownership and property rights, which he equates to forced labor. For Nozick, justice depends entirely on the historical process of voluntary exchange, not enforcing a specific pattern of wealth distribution.

Finally, we turn to Thomas Nagel, whose work on moral luck complicates both of these theories. Rawls and Nozick assume our actions and resulting outcomes are fundamentally under our control and thus subject to moral evaluation. Nagel challenges this very notion, arguing that luck can profoundly influence the morality of our choices and their consequences—whether it's the circumstances we are born into (circumstantial luck), the kind of person we are (constitutive luck), or the outcomes of our actions (resultant luck). So how can we hold individuals solely responsible for justice or injustice if luck dictates so much of their capacity to act morally or achieve success?

All these ideas raise important questions: Is a just society one that prioritizes fair outcomes for all citizens, or one that rigorously protects the process of individual liberty and property rights? And how much do chance and fortune undermine our attempts to build a perfectly just system?

Join Plato’s Cave and the Orlando Stoics for a discussion on justice, rights, and the structure of a fair society.

READING MATERIALS

Robert Nozick: Robert Nozick - Wikipedia
Entitlement Theory: Nozick, Robert | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (See the section on "Nozick's Entitlement Theory of Justice")

John Rawls: John Rawls - Wikipedia
Original Position: John Rawls (1921—2002) - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (See the section titled "The Original Position")

Thomas Nagel: Thomas Nagel - Wikipedia
Moral Luck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_luck
Thomas Nagel, "Moral Luck" (PDF): https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil1100/Nagel1.pdf

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The meeting begins at 9:00 AM Eastern, with dialogue starting 9:15 AM sharp.