Nozick Distributive Justice Essay

Is Robert Nozick’s approach to distributive justice more persuasive than that of John Rawls?

The concept of distributive justice is something that divides opinion and it is most clearly explained as the redistribution of wealth, concerned with how society goes about internally allocating services and goods. This has a direct affect on people, policies and governments and this essay will demonstrate that Rawls gives the most plausible and persuasive account of distributive justice, where his theories are most easily reflected in society. We will see this through looking at justice as freedom, fairness, society and individual, and the morality of taxation. Justice is synonymous with fairness- who gets what and what is what. We will see how ultimately justice is freedom, and it is in fact in looking at injustice, that we best understand justice. To look at the persuasiveness of both Nozick and Rawls, it is necessary for us

Equality is necessary for the total benefit of society, for it can protect particular areas of entitlements. Rawls’s account allows for there to be liberties and fairness present, allowing the total society to benefit. Nozick’s theory however can find fairness redundant, for his theory alone leaves certain members of society at a loss. Rawls’s Justice as Fairness (Rawls; 2001) proves that entitlement theory would not be able to hold justice alone, but that there is a need for distributive justice to be supported by fairness. Therefore what we see is that where Nozick becomes consumed by his view of fairness being underpinned by rights and the original position, Rawls’s thoughts supersede this and we find equality to be key where the natural balances of society to come into play. Another understanding of distributive justice leads to the premise of society and of