JJT
Discussion questions
JJT “A Defense of Abortion”
1) As concisely stated as possible: what is the precise connection
etween Nozick and Thompson’s article.
2) Can you sign accept Nozick’s argument without accepting
Thompson’s? Why or why not?
3) Thompson argues that both parties to the abortion debate (pro-
and anti-abortion) have typically assumed what? How does she
edefine the terms of the debate?
4) A. There are at least 5 analogies that JJT deploys in her argument.
Identify them and then explain their function. B. Formulate an
objection to at least one.
5) Choose one of the following:
a. JJT argues that one rarely thinks to oppose abortion on
the grounds of special relations of dependence (so focused
are we on establishing the independence of the fetus).
What does she mean and how might such an account go?
What might such an account tell us about Nozick’s account?
. How might changing Good Samaritan laws affect the
inequality of treatment that JJT’s article diagnoses? What
effects might this have one Nozick’s argument?
A Defense of Abortion
Judith Jarvis Thomson
Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Autumn, 1971), pp. 47-66.
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Microsoft Word - Nozick_Justice.doc
Distributive Justice
Robert Nozick
From Anarchy, State, and Utopia, XXXXXXXXXX, with omissions. Copyright @ 1974 by
Basic Books, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a subsidiary of Perseus
Books Group, LLC.
The minimal state is the most extensive state that can be justified. Any state more
extensive violates people's rights. Yet many persons have put forth reasons
purporting to justify a more extensive state. It is impossible within the compass of
this book to examine all the reasons that have been put forth. Therefore, I shall
focus upon those generally acknowledged to be most weighty and influential, to
see precisely wherein they fail. In this chapter we consider the claim that a more
extensive state is justified, because necessary (or the best instrument) to achieve
distributive justice; in the next chapter we shall take up diverse other claims.
The term "distributive justice" is not a neutral one. Hearing the term "distribution,"
most people presume that some thing or mechanism uses some principle or criterion to
give out a supply of things. Into this process of distributing shares some e
or may
have crept. So it is an open question, at least, whether redistribution should take
place; whether we should do again what has already been done once, though poorly.
However, we are not in the position of children who have been given portions of
pie by someone who now makes last minute adjustments to rectify careless cutting.
There is no central distribution, no person or group entitled to control all the
esources, jointly deciding how they are to be doled out. What each person gets, he
gets from others who give to him in exchange for something, or as a gift. In a free
society, diverse persons control different resources, and new holdings arise out of the
voluntary exchanges and actions of persons. There is no more a distributing or
distribution of shares than there is a distributing of mates in a society in which
persons choose whom they shall ma
y. The total result is the product of many
individual decisions which the different individuals involved are entitled to make.
Some uses of the term "distribution," it is true, do not imply a previous distributing
appropriately judged by some criterion (for example, "probability distribution");
nevertheless, despite the title of this chapter, it would be best to use a terminology that
clearly is neutral. We shall speak of people's holdings; a principle of justice in
holdings describes (part of) what justice tells us (requires) about holdings. I shall state
first what I take to be the co
ect view about justice in holdings, and then turn to the
discussion of alternate views.
Section 1
The Entitlement Theory
The subject of justice in holdings consists of three major topics. The first is the
original acquisition of holdings, the appropriation of unheld things. This includes the
issues of how unheld things may come to be held, the process, or processes, by
which unheld things may come to be held, the things that may come to be held by
these processes, the extent of what comes to be held by a particular process, and so on.
We shall refer to the complicated truth about this topic, which we shall not
formulate here, as the principle of justice in acquisition. The second topic concerns
the transfer of holdings from one person to another. By what processes may a person
transfer holdings to another? How may a person acquire a holding from another who
holds it? Under this topic come general descriptions of voluntary exchange, and gift
and (on the other hand) fraud, as well as reference to particular conventional details
fixed upon in a given society. The complicated truth about this subject (with
placeholders for conventional details) we shall call the principle of justice in
transfer. (And we shall suppose it also includes principles governing how a person
may divest himself of a holding, passing it into an unheld state.)
If the world were wholly just, the following inductive definition would
exhaustively cover the subject of justice in holdings.
1. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in
acquisition is entitled to that holding.
2. A person who acquires a holding in accordance with the principle of justice in
transfer, from someone else entitled to the holding, is entitled to the holding.
3. No one is entitled to a holding except by (repeated) applications of 1 and 2.
The complete principle of distributive justice would say simply that a distribution is
just if everyone is entitled to the holdings they possess under the distribution.
A distribution is just if it arises from another just distribution by legitimate means.
The legitimate means of moving from one distribution to another are specified by
the principle of justice in transfer. The legitimate first "moves" are specified by the
principle of justice in acquisition. Whatever arises from a just situation by just
steps is itself just. The means of change specified by the principle of justice in
transfer preserve justice. As co
ect rules of inference are truth-preserving, and any
conclusion deduced via repeated application of such rules from only true premisses
is itself true, so the means of transition from one situation to another specified by the
principle of justice in transfer are justice-preserving, and any situation actually
arising from repeated transitions in accordance with the principle from a just
situation is itself just. The parallel between justice-preserving transformations and
truth-preserving transformations illuminates where it fails as well as where it holds.
That a conclusion could have been deduced by truth-preserving means from
premisses that are true suffices to show its truth. That from a just situation a situation
could have arisen via justice-preserving means does not suffice to show its justice.
The fact that a thief's victims voluntarily could have presented him with gifts does
not entitle the thief to his ill-gotten gains. Justice in holdings is historical; it
depends upon what actually has happened. We shall return to this point later.
Not all actual situations are generated in accordance with the two principles of
justice in holdings: the principle of justice in acquisition and the principle of
justice in transfer. Some people steal from others, or defraud them, or enslave them,
seizing their product and preventing them from living as they choose, or forcibly
exclude others from competing in exchanges. None of these are permissible modes
of transition from one situation to another. And some persons acquire holdings by
means not sanctioned by the principle of justice in acquisition. The existence of past
injustice (previous violations of the first two principles of justice in holdings) raises
the third major topic under justice in holdings: the rectification of injustice in
holdings. If past injustice has shaped present holdings in various ways, some
identifiable and some not, what now, if anything, ought to be done to rectify these
injustices? What obligations do the performers of injustice have toward those whose
position is worse than it would have been had the injustice not been done? Or, than
it would have been had compensation been paid promptly? How, if at all, do
things change if the beneficiaries and those made worse off are not the direct parties
in the act of injustice, but, for example, their descendants? Is an injustice done to
someone whose holding was itself based upon an unrectified injustice? How far back
must one go in wiping clean the historical slate of injustices? What may victims of
injustice permissibly do in order to rectify the injustices being done to them,
including the many injustices done by persons acting through their government? I
do not know of a thorough or theoretically sophisticated treatment of such issues.
Idealizing greatly, let us suppose theoretical investigation will produce a principle
of rectification. This principle uses historical information about previous situations
and injustices done in them (as defined by the first two principles of justice and
ights against interference), and information about the actual course of events that
flowed from these injustices, until the present