SİYASAL DÜŞÜNCE - Deneme Sınavı - 5

The libertarian view puts forward its own conceptualization on social justice around individual responsibility and entitlement towards acquiring, transferring and holding private property, which all of them illustrate an approach of social justice in terms of individual’s merit and desert. It rejects the intervention to the spontaneous order of market that is assumed to work so as to distribute all desired and undesired goods perfectly just on its own. The main characteristic of just society is considered as the one in which everyone is equally entitled to the rights of acquisition, transfer and holding private properties. If a person earns much more than others through drawing on such equal rights, this is a legitimate inequality since all of them were equal at the beginning of the process in being entitled to these rights.

Merit-focused inequalities can be seen as “natural” and fair inequalities. But this perspective is also criticised, due to fact that those merits are gained within a social environment, which is not equal. Thus inequalities that are based on natural distribution of merits cannot be fair. The answer is D.

According to Rawls, these would inevitably result in the following principles:
• Each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with a similar scheme for all.

• Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions:
- First, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity;
- Second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of societ

Rawls assumes that once this schema is asked to parties, all of them are going to agree to lexically introduce these principles. This means that the second principle, for instance, only can into play insofar as the first principle is satisfied. Rawls in here considers the first principle, which guarantees basic political liberties (for example, freedom of speech, right to vote, freedom of association, and so forth) for everyone, having priority over the second principle, which arranges distributions in power and wealth in line with a meritocratic view and some egalitarian concerns. The answer is A.

Sen proposes a different analytical framework to assess social justice. This framework is known as the capability approach in the literature. Suggesting that the individuals’ capability, or freedom, should be the basis of assessment regarding justice, Sen provides a promising way to overcome the problem that is related to people’s differentiated social and personal characteristics leading to inequalities in achieving a good life. Sen’s capability approach to justice claims that the primary objective of social arrangements should be based on the expansion of people’s capabilities or their substantive freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings that they attain value. Focal point of justice in the capability approach is based on that whether a person has a capability to do things or be that s/he has reason to value. Cevap E'dir.

The main question of Dworkin’s perspective about the equality in resource ownership is about why society should keep compensating undesired outcomes emerging due to individuals’ own choices.

In Republic, a well-known work of Plato, the central issue is “justice” and it is discussed in relation to the concept of “virtue”. Hence, B is the correct answer.

In the corpus of Roman Law, it is the first time in the history of political thought that justice was defined in relation to individual’s rights. C is the correct answer.

Hume’s emphasis on the public utility as the focal point of justice in a society has led the emergence and spread of the utilitarian perspective in the literature of not only social justice, but also economics, administration, politics, law as well as diplomacy. A is the correct answer.

With the slogan “the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people”, utilitarianism considers justice in accordance with the aggregative interest of the society. Hence, it is considered as aggregative theory of justice. Therefore, D is the correct answer.

Different from the utilitarian model of social justice that advocates giving priority to the aggregative interests of society, the libertarian model of social justice highlights importance of certain inalienable rights of individual, such as earning and holding the private property. Thus, E is the correct answer.

The main proponents of the contemporary libertarian idea of justice are Nozick and Hayek. Bentham is a proponent of utilitarian idea of justice. D is the correct answer.

According to Hayek, in a society of a free humans, the concept of social justice is strictly empty or meaningless. A is the correct answer.

Rawlsian model is based on the concept of "fairness" which he himself coined. Thus, C is the correct answer.

The original position refers to a hypothetical position of primordial equality in which parties stand behind a veil of ignorance where they have no knowledge of their own societal positions (for example, their social class and statue, natural assets and abilities, their life plans and conception of the good, cultural belonging, or generation), except that of “the general facts about human society”. Thus, E is the correct answer.

For Rawls, considering his understanding of the original position in which everyone is under the veil of ignorance, reason tells us that social inequalities are tolerable inasmuch as they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. Therefore, B is the correct answer.

Criminal justice, social justice

Utilitarian approach

John Rawls

Hume

Peter Townsend