68 - Envy

Summary

Envy is a nonmoral feeling or emotion, one that is aroused by the recognition that others are faring better than oneself. Critics of egalitarian justice often charge that it springs from envy. The envious person would prefer to have less of some good than to have more of it if that meant having less than others. If egalitarian justice required worsening the position of the better off without raising the position of the worse off, then it might be motivated by feelings of envy. Rawls took this possibility seriously. He sought to show that the egalitarian conception of justice that he proposes and defends, “justice as fairness,” is not one that is based on envy. As he allows, “strict egalitarianism, the doctrine which insists upon an equal distribution of all primary goods, conceivably derives from this propensity” (TJ 472). But justice as fairness does not, since there is an independent justiication for it, one that does not appeal to envious feelings. This is shown by three basic features of the original position argument that Rawls advances in favor of his conception of justice. The first feature concerns the motivation of the parties in the original position. It is stipulated that the parties are mutually disinterested.