SEEU Review vol. 5 Nr. 2 (pdf) - South East European University

SEEU Review Volume 5, No. 2, 2009
and therefore liberty can be restricted only for the sake of liberty”. Second
Priority Rule suggests the priority of justice over efficiency and welfare:
“The second principle of justice is lexically prior to the principle of
efficiency and to that of maximizing the sum of advantages; and fair
opportunity is prior to the difference principle”. General Conception refers
to basic social goods and values: “All social primary goods - liberty and
opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect - are to be
distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods
is to the advantage of the least favored” (Rawls, 1971, 302-3).
General conception of justice is suggested in TJ’s previous pages as
follows:
“All social values - liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the
bases of self-respect - are to be distributed equally unless an unequal
distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage”.
In addition, injustice is seen as “simply inequalities that are not to the
benefit of all”. This general conception “imposes no restrictions on what sort
of inequalities are permissible; it only requires that everyone’s position be
improved” (Rawls, 1971, 62).
Priority rules and general conception of justice seem to be suggested as
security valves for liberal democratic society. However, we are still at the
stage of principles built and constructed by Rawls himself only.
Rawls gives the priority to the liberty in the first principle and excludes it
in the second principle. This exclusion is believed as Rawls’ contribution to
the theory of distributive justice while the first principle is considered as the
distinctive contribution to the traditional tension between justice and liberty.
If we reach at the social minimum of material wealth, we do not exchange
liberty for any other social goods. However, liberty can be restricted only in
favour of liberty. Here criteria of restriction are the principle of common
good or common interest in that all can agree that no restriction will be
harmful for all. However, possibility of such an agreement is controversial
and even absent (said by Scanlon), the principle of common interest is
problematic because of the difficulty in balancing the competing liberties,
and the relative importance of the liberties that are different in terms of
advantages and disadvantages embodied in the liberties. This argument is
developed much more in the Marxist critics (Daniels, 1978, xxvi-ii).
Furthermore, a communitarian attack followed traditional criticism of
excessive individualism of liberalism and claimed that background
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