Consider: “…………We believe that as a matter of principle each -number of society has an inviolability founded on justice.” (Rawls) (1999)
The claim is the moral core of John Rawls‘s A Theory of Justice (1971). It opens §1, where the inviolability is one “that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override”, and returns in §6 as a considered conviction that utilitarianism cannot account for and a sound theory of justice must.
What the claim asserts
- Against aggregation. Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism maximises total welfare, so one person’s loss may be offset by others’ gain. Rawls replies that it “does not take seriously the distinction between persons” (§5): it treats society as one individual trading present against future satisfactions.
- Kantian ground. After Immanuel Kant, persons are ends, never merely means.
- Right prior to good. Justice limits which goods may be pursued instead of being derived from them, which makes the theory deontological.
- Institutional form. The liberties of equal citizenship are “settled”, and rights secured by justice are “not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests”. Hence the lexical priority of the first principle: liberty may be limited only for the sake of liberty.
- Derivation. Behind the veil of ignorance, parties who may prove to be the sacrificed minority will not gamble their liberties.
What it protects, and what it does not
The inviolable core is the person and the basic liberties, not every holding. Income and wealth fall under the difference principle, which may redistribute them; talents are treated as a “common asset”. The priority of liberty also binds only under reasonably favourable conditions, once basic wants can be met.
Its strength
It explains convictions utilitarianism cannot: slavery is wrong even if profitable; a scapegoat may not be punished to calm a mob. It gives minorities a claim no majority can outvote, the rationale of entrenched rights.
Critiques
- Utilitarian. John C. Harsanyi showed that impartial choice under uncertainty can yield average utility; inviolability then looks built into Rawls’s device rather than proved by it.
- Liberal. H. L. A. Hart, “Rawls on Liberty and Its Priority” (1973), asked why rational parties would never trade some liberty for material gain. Rawls conceded ground, recasting the first principle as a “fully adequate scheme” of basic liberties.
- Libertarian. Robert Nozick turned the charge around: pooling talents as a common asset itself ignores the separateness of persons, whose rights are strict side-constraints.
- Communitarian. Michael Sandel held that the inviolable subject is an unencumbered self, abstracted from the attachments that constitute it.
- Capability. Amartya Sen gives liberty special weight but not absolute priority: hunger and preventable illness can violate a person as gravely as lost freedom.
The Indian anchor
In K. S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India (2017) nine judges held privacy and dignity intrinsic to Article 21, and the plurality refused to discount sexual minorities’ privacy because they are few. Navtej Singh Johar (2018) set constitutional morality above social morality. The Directive Principles concede Sen’s point that inviolability needs material conditions.
Conclusion
Rawls is right that no social gain licenses using a person as a mere instrument: inviolability is a sound side-constraint on aggregation. It is weakest as a strict ranking of liberty above every urgent need. The defensible version is an inviolable, fully adequate core of liberties and dignity, joined to a duty to secure the conditions that make it real.