What you are citing is not the principle Rawls is actually defending as his second principle of justice, it is merely a principle he considers along the way. In its canonical formulation, the second principle reads: "Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity [the opportunity principle]; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society [the difference principle]."

With the correct text substituted, your point about the least advantaged makes more sense. Still, what Rawls is demanding for the least advantaged is really in one sense more than a safety net. The word "safety net" suggests a certain minimum, perhaps some amount sufficient to meet one's basic needs. But Rawls is demanding the highest feasible bottom position, even if this turns out to be well above the level needed for economic security. So, even if there is a nice safety net for the least advantaged, the society still falls short of justice if it is possible to raise the lowest income even higher. And this makes your questions -- what do the rich get out of it? -- even more acute.

To answer your question: Rawls is theorizing so-to-speak before there are rich and poor, before society is built, before its basic rules are formulated. We can make this more vivid by imagining a few adults stranded together on an island and deliberating about how to set up the economy of their new society. How much economic inequality should the rules of their society allow? To this question, one natural answer is: no inequality at all. Let everyone be entitled to a share of the joint product that corresponds to his or her share of the labor contributed. So, if you did 20 percent of the work in a given year, say, then you should get 20 percent of the social product that year.

Rawls assumes that it may be possible to do better than this, better for everyone, by raising average productivity (output per hour worked). One obvious way to do this is to agree to prizes for the most productive workers. This gives everyone an incentive to try hard to be productive and, with most people working harder (than would be the case without prizes), the average output per hour is higher. We use some of the extra product to pay out the prizes and then distribute the remainder at an equal hourly rate -- and we find that even those who do not win a prize get more than they would have received without prizes.

To give a concrete example, suppose that, if the islanders organized their economy on a principle of equal hourly pay, then their total product would be 24,000 units of food and their labor time 12,000 hours -- so everyone would get paid two units per hour (= average productivity). Now suppose instead a prize were offered promising double pay to the most productive worker, and suppose this would result in a social product of 30,000 units and a total labor time of 10,000 (average productivity 3 units per hour). Since you are the most productive worker this year, you get paid as if you had contributed twice as many hours as you actually did contribute -- you get credited with 4000 hours, say, rather than the 2000 you actually worked. With 30,000 units available to pay for 10,000 hours of work plus your 2000 additional credited hours, each hour would fetch 2.5 units. You get paid 10,000 units, effectively giving you 5 units per hour. The others get 2.5 units per hour, which is still more than everyone would get if there were no prizes at all.

There are of course infinitely many ways of setting up such a prize system that, by rewarding the more productive, raises average productivity. Which of the many institutional design options should be chosen? Rawls answers this questions in two steps. In the first step, he argues that we should consider only those rule systems that raise everyone's hourly pay above what it would be under the equal-pay system (what you are quoting reflects this step). In the second step he then argues that we should choose that rule system under which the lowest raise (over the equal-pay system) is as high as possible -- or, in terms of prizes, Rawls argues in the second step that one should design the prize system in such a way that the hourly pay of those who win no prize is as high as possible.

We can now adjust your question in two ways. First, you can ask whether Rawls's proposal may not still be shortchanging the most productive (the richest under his scheme). Perhaps they get paid twice as much as the least productive even while they are really four times as productive. If this is so, do the more productive not deserve to be paid four times as much? Rawls's answer is that the capacity for greater productivity typically depends on factors (such a natural talents, good parents) for which the more productive can claim no credit, and that the more productive therefore should receive greater rewards only insofar as this also benefits the less productive. (But is there not, you may ask back, such as thing as culpable laziness?)

Second, you can ask why, in our society, where the rich have very much more than they would have in a Rawlsian society, the rich should accept the transition to a Rawlsian society. They have no prudential reason to accept this transition (no more than slaveholders did to accept the abolition of slavery). But if the existing rewards are unjustly excessive, then they do have a moral reason to help scale them back (just as slaveholders had a moral reason to support abolition).

No and yes. Historically, the idea of toleration developed along side streams of philosophical scrutiny of religious belief that suggested, rightly I think, that there's just not very good reason for zealous commitment to religious beliefs. So, while a zealot may, as you describe it, be exceedingly confident or dogmatic in his or her belief, there's no sound justification for doing so. In this sense, strains of modern skepticism have tempered religious belief in the form of what early modern thinkers called "enthusiasm." But, on the other hand, there are many ways of holding a belief "strongly." There are, one might say, ways of holding religious beliefs strongly that are consistent with tolerance and ways of holding beliefs strongly that are inconsistent. Tolerance itself commonly suggests that contrary views are considered wrong and even, perhaps, obnoxious. So, analogously, we speak of a body's capacity to tolerate a toxin or to tolerate the cold, etc. So, just as we might speak of a person who is able to tolerate extremely cold temperatures, we might meaningfully speak of someone with the capacity to tolerate views with which he or she is in profound disagreement. Furthermore, tolerance is ultimately about conduct. One might believe very strongly that atheists are going to be damned but still not think that the state or anyone else ought to coerce them to become religious believers. I think this has also been one of the inheritances of early modernity. Early modern religious conflict became so unpleasant to people that simply as a practical matter they agreed that society is better off tolerating religious difference than trying to enforce uniformity. Part of that agreement was that while believers in a given dogma would not attempt to enforce their beliefs upon others, others would not enforce contrary beliefs upon them. So, for many the network of thinking surrounding the cultivation of tolerance did temper religious belief; and for others it created a space where it remained possible to hold strong religious beliefs but not enforce those beliefs where others are concerned.

Yes. Clear cases are ones where the agent has strong reasons to believe that (1) the law is unjust, (2) compliance would cause substantial harm, and (3) non-compliance would neither (3a) lose much greater benefits, nor (3b) cause harm of comparable magnitude or (3c) unreasonable cost upon the agent. The Nazi period offers examples. Justice required German citizens in typical circumstances not to obey a law that mandated that they report Jews to the authorities for internment in concentration camps. This is so because German citizens knew, or could and should have known, that (1) the internment of Jews (and others) was unjust, (2) reporting a non-interned Jew to the authorities was very likely to harm this person greatly, (3a) the internment of the person reported would not bring any substantial benefit, (3b) the non-internment of the person would cause no harm comparable to the harm of internment, and (3c) not reporting a Jew was typically without risk to the agent (at least when one could plausibly plead ignorance).

Here's another idea. Figure out how much would it have cost each of you to take the taxi separately. Let's say it's $3 for her (it went straight to her place), and $5 for you (the taxi had to go a bit out of its way, from your point of view). Then each of you should pay the appropriate proportion of what you would have paid, had you taken separate taxis.

Let her be A, and let you be C. Let AJ be her fare for your joint ride. Let AS be her fare had you ridden separately; in practice, AJ=AS, since the fact that you are in the cab won't change the route (unless you ask the driver to take the scenic route, for reasons we will not discuss). Let CJ and CS be yours jointly and separately, too. Normally, CJ >= CS (going together didn't make the fare to your place less than it would have been), though we don't have to assume that, either.

Anyway, consider now the ratio CJ/(AS+CS). This is the proportion of the actual cost to what it would have cost to get you home separately. My proposal is that she should pay AS*CJ/(AS+CS) and that you should pay CS*CJ/(AC+CS). Note that if we add these, we get (AS+CS)*CJ/(AS+CS) = CJ, which means we have the right amount of money in the end.

This will save you both money, obviously, so long as CJ/(AS+CS) < 1, that is, so long as the total fare for the joint trip is less than it would have cost to get you home separately. (I.e., you don't live in completely opposite directions.) If it would have cost more, then it would not have made financial sense anyway for you to share a cab, though you might have had other reasons, even good ones, to do so. (These probably had to do with taking the scenic route.) In that case, however, it does seem as if you ought to share the additional cost, which this formula delivers.

Either way, you each save (or spend) the same proportion of what you would have spent, so this seems fair.

This cleanly extends to the case of more than two people. It also applies to any circumstance in which people share an expense and thereby reduce (in the normal case) their joint expense. This makes me suspect that this idea of proportionality is well-known and may even have a name. Perhaps something involving "proportionality".

In the taxi case, it may be hard to calculate everything in practice, of course. So now we need to consider how to get a decent approximation to the formula we had, and to do that we'll have to make an idealizing assumption. Let's suppose that your friend's place is on the way to yours, so that dropping her off makes no difference to your fare. That is, CJ=CS and AJ=AS, since we'll also and that no one is taking the scenic route. Then we can calculate your cost and hers knowing only the actual fares. In practice, you end up paying a bit more than if CS

So, in your example, we'd get that you pay 6*6/6+3 = $4 and she pay 3*6/6+3 = $2, which was your first proposal. So, there you go.

The Bible tells us all sorts of things -- e.g. that wheat ripens later than barley (Exodus 9:31-33). Now, when farmers arrange their work so the barley gets harvested first, then I suppose you might say that they are acting according to what the Bible says about crops. But of course, they don't arrange their work thus and so because the Bible says wheat ripens later, but because it actually does ripen later.

The Bible also tells us that we should help each other out -- for example "If you see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it. Help him get it to its feet." (Deut: 22:4). Now, again, when I stop to help a broken-down motorist on a country road, for example, I suppose you might say that I am acting according to what the Bible enjoins. But I don't act that way because the Bible says that it is the decent thing to do, but because it actually is the decent thing to do. (After all, there are plenty of things the Bible enjoins that I don't think decent at all, and very probably nor do you, and we wouldn't dream of doing them: consider all those injunctions about whom to stone to death.)

So we must distinguish between acting in a way that happens to accord with some part of the Bible, Qur'an, or another book of moral precepts, and acting because the Bible, Qur'an, or whatever, tells you to act thus and so. The fact that people are in this or that way acting in accord with some of the more admirable precepts of e.g. the Bible doesn't ipso facto give their behaviour any distinctively religious character. And, of course, supporting the secularization of public life does not mean thinking that people shouldn't act decently, i.e. shouldn't act in accord with the more admirable bits of morality shared by various religious codes as well as by non-religious ethical codes. Removing religion from inappropriate places doesn't entail removing morality!

What a fine question! But a very difficult one.

In a nutshell, I'm inclined to defend the thesis there are wide areas of experience that cannot be understood to be possible if we consider the self as in some way detachable from its cultural context. There aren't many philosophers who even raise such detachment as a possibility, much less something desirable. In this 'wide area' I would include at least all the arts, many of the nuances of emotion or expression, certain varieties of inter-personal relations (e.g. some familial relations), and probably also big chunks of politics and religion. Assuming then that it were possible to forget or never acquire culture, one's life would be considerably impoverished. On this way of thinking, it is feasible that one should feel grateful to one's culture; and, moreover, preserving it is a species of moral service to others. In the case you describe, part of participating fully in traditional Irish culture is learning the language – in this way one gains access to those dimensions of human experience that belong to the Irish 'national identity'. Of course, such 'gratitude' can go to far: nationalisms can become politically or ethically odious, excuses for prejudices or worse. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to be impossible to take up a critical attitude towards culture even while being a part of it.

However, even if the above thesis can be defended, that still doesn't explain why I should have any such relation to my culture – that is, the cultural context I happen to be in – rather than just upping sticks and going native somewhere else. One culture is not interchangeable with another, to be sure, nevertheless (according to the above thesis) all function in this way with respect to the self; cultures are functionally equivalent. (I suppose it might be argued that some cultures are richer than others, but we can't all crowd into France now can we!)

The issue seems to be why should an accident of our birth have any privileges from me in this regard. Now I cannot eliminate certain accidents of birth – whatever I do it will always be the case that I was born in X, son or daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Y. But I certainly can choose to annul the effect that these accidents have upon me, by leaving X far behind and sending Y little more than a postcard. Why shouldn't I? And, if I do leave (note than in many cultures this is accounted a good thing) should I at least try to maintain some contact with my roots?

The answer to the above questions is not obvious. At best we can say it would be a curious situation to partake of the advantages of a culture while at the same time feeling antipathy towards it – one might suspect a certain element of self-loathing. And yet, this is a surprisingly common situation. Because I can take up a critical attitude, I know that there are aspects of my culture that I love, others to which I am indifferent, and others I believe to be in some way wrong.

I suspect the problem is less about the individual psychology of cultural beliefs than about the politics of culture, which encourages us to believe a culture is unified. To acknowledge the lack of unification is to remove one good reason for the very existence of the state. Even if a country declares itself to be 'multicultural' it will often do so by declaring just this to be part of its culture – the most famous example is the 'melting pot' metaphor in the United States. However, we know that sometimes cultural unity is, factually and historically, just nonsense, invented as part of a political discourse for political ends. Not that there is no such thing as culture; but rather that it is not (or not necessarily) a unified thing, with all that entails for the nature of one's gratitude to culture.

I hope this goes some way to answering your question.

Let's flip the question around a bit. Suppose I believe that people who hold certain particular religious views are likely to favor policies I don't like and oppose policies I like. That gives me a reason to worry that if I vote for a candidate of that religious persuasion, I'd be voting for someone who wouldn't share my views on things I care about politically. And surely that's an acceptable reason not to vote for someone. It seems pretty different from racism or homophobia.

People who wouldn't vote for an atheist, I'd guess, typically believe that atheists differ with them on questions that they care about. They see a person's atheism as an indicator of how the person would vote if s/he were a legislator. That still doesn't seem like racism or homophobia.

Except... Experience suggests that people who wouldn't vote for an atheist sometmes have at least this in common with racists and homophobes: they haven't actually subjected their beliefs to scrutiny. It's very common to find people who believe atheists would somehow lack a moral compass or wouldn't take moral questions seriously. That, at least, is sheer preudice. There are plenty of atheists who take moral questions very seriously, have considered them carefully, and hold thoughtful, responsible views.

Worse: many people think that morality without religion is somehow impossible. The issue here is trickier than the first one; seeing that morality doesn't require religion calls for some philosophical insight that doesn't come easily to everyone. But it's still a mistake, even if a slightly more subtle one.

So far, we've said that a person could base their attitude toward a candidate on information about the candidate's religious views without lapsing into the nastiness of something akin to racism or homophobia. We've said that in the case of atheism, however, many people have faulty beliefs about what atheists are like and about the relationship between religion and morality.

But we need to add: there's a good deal of the same sort of prejudice about religious candidates. It's not unusual to find people who think that anyone who's seriously religious is a crackpot. That's equally silly. It doesn't stand up to empirical scrutiny, and it doesn't stand up to philosophical scrutiny either. But the overall difference remains: voting against someone because you are suspicious of their views isn't like voting against them just because they're black or white or gay...

I suspect you are right on many fronts. However, we (in the United States) have a ignoble history of blocking adults from voting, e.g., denying suffrage to women and non-whites. I think ought to make us skeptical of movements to disenfranchise people.

Another way to go, of course, is to enfranchise children - as when the United States lowered the voting age to eighteen from twenty one. Maybe we ought to move the voting age to fifteen or twelve?

Recently someone told me one quick test for dementia is how quickly and accurately you can count back from 100 in units of 7. I flunked. I am thirty four.

But if we are press forward with the imposition of minimum cognitive standards then we would need some fair system for discerning which elderly citizens have enough capacity to vote from those that do not; the blanket approach we take with minors would be hard to defend when imposed on seniors because it is much more difficult to justify taking rights away that adults are accustomed to having. (On the up side: we could join forces with the motor vehicles agencies to kill two birds with one stone - a driving/voting test for the elderly!)

In theory, a cognitive test does not sound objectionable, but the devil is in the details. I fear abuse, mismanagement, and perhaps a slippery slope which would lead to disenfranchising other categories of adults.

Perhaps it's not so much a principle as a widely agreed-upon norm for setting potential conflict aside. We could imagine a society where the rule that everyone internalized was quite different: the person on the bench should always give their seat up to the newcomer. That would be a perfectly acceptable arrangement, and so there's no deep principle here; either way of settling priority is fine.

That said, someone who bogarts the bench for hours on end just because they got there first isn't playing nicely. They never got the point of their mother's admonition to let someone else have a turn.

At least in the USA, political parties aren't monolithic. Though we're in a period where there may be more uniformity among Republicans (at least in Congress) than there has been historically, Republicans disagree among themselves, and any Democrat thinks ruefully from time to time of Will Rogers' famous quip that he didn' belong to an organized political party because he was a Democrat.

People can follow their party or their church mindlessly, but that needn't happen. Many people belong to a political party because overall, the party fits their political values better than the alternatives, and because collective action is often more effective than hundreds of Lone Rangers acting on their own. But it's not unusual for members of Congress not to vote with their parties, and it's also not unusual for a registered Democrat or registered Republican to vote for a candiate of another party. So the comparison with the medieval Church seems a bit strained -- especially since the sorts of sanctions parties impose on wayward members fall quite a bit short of thumbscrews and such.