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Comparing John Rawls And Nozick's View Of Justice

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Comparing John Rawls And Nozick's View Of Justice
John Rawls and Robert Nozick views on Justice do have several opposing differences; however, they both do have similar context in some ways. Some of the major differences addressed in the reading are the issue of a legitimate distribution of wealth by the government. In John Rawls Second principal, the difference principle, Rawls basically explains that inequalities, socially and economically, are acceptable if they promote the well-being of the poor. Basically, John Rawls believes that the poor should have some compensation, through the taxation of the wealth. Rawls believes in order to enact this principle, there needs to be “justice of fairness”. In order to get “justice of fairness”, Rawls states that people who are born rich, poor, or …show more content…
Both John Rawls and Robert Nozick believed that every individual has a right to their own freedom; however their views on how those liberties could be issued, differ. Rawl’s views on the proper function of government is that people could live in a society where they can live their own way, with their own interests in mind, and justice is only used to limit those interests that pose a threat on others. Nozick’s view on the proper function of government is that everyone should be free to be able to do what they want, with a “minimal state” involvement unless it is pertained to protecting their citizens from crimes. Nozick’s entitlement theory is a theory on the distribution of property when viewed from his theory on principle of justice. The Entitlement Theory is broken up into 3 principles. The first principle is the principle of justice in acquisition, which deals with how people come to get their own property. The second principle is the principle of justice in transfer, which states that if the person come to own property in a justifiable way, using the methods of the principle of justice in acquisition, then if that person was to give their property to someone, than the new owner is justified to that property. The last principle is the principle of rectification of injustice, which talks about the process that would be taken if someone comes into property unjustly (without going through the first two

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