Rawls and Envy

One striking aspect of John Rawls's theory of justice is its exclusion of what Rawls calls "envy." The parties in his original position aim only to maximize their allotments of goods in absolute terms, lacking any concern for how they fare relative to others. Accordingly, the key feature of his famous "difference principle" is that it assesses the justice of relative inequalities solely by how they affect absolute allotments. The exclusion of envy is hardly an idiosyncrasy of Rawls's theory: viewed in broader historical perspective, it reflects a long-standing justification for capitalism, one emphasizing the ways in which economic growth lifts all boats in absolute terms even if it widens inequalities in relative ones. Yet Rawls's ambivalent treatment of envy—whose exclusion appears variably as a simplifying assumption, a psychological postulate, and a moral doctrine—reflects the broader difficulties of maintaining this line between absolute and relative.