Compreendendo a utopia realizável: uma defesa do ideal de justiça distributiva da teoria de John Rawls

Abstract

This study aims to defend John Rawls s theoretical approach to distributive justice based on the changes that he made to his theory of justice as fairness. Therefore the research considers not only Rawls s criterion of distributive justice as it was laid out on A Theory of Justice by the difference principle but also proposes to consider how the criterion can be understood in his later work, mainly The Law of Peoples. Contrary to what is commonly held by the cosmopolitan criticism of Rawls s later work, this study argues that Rawls proposes a feasible theoretical framework to deal with problems of justice on the international sphere and will justify within Rawls s theory his motivation for not employing the difference principle as one of the principles that should hold between peoples. To do so, it will be necessary to review the main changes that Rawls made to his theory as well as consider the cosmopolitan challenges that argue for a radically egalitarian criterion of distributive justice on an international sphere, such as the difference principle. Accordingly, this study will side with an understanding of Rawls s theory as a project that kept its main ideas notwithstanding the many changes Rawls made to his theory in the effort of trying to solve some of the inconsistencies that he recognized in A Theory of Justice.