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Rawls claims that ‘utilitarianism does not take the distinction between persons seriously.’ Explain this claim and why Rawls believes his theory is an improvement.
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Rawls claims that 'utilitarianism does not take the distinction between persons seriously.' Explain this claim and why Rawls believes his theory is an improvement. Then discuss either (i) whether Rawls still does not take 'the distinction between persons' sufficiently seriously, as Nozick charges, or (ii) whether Rawls relies on a picture of human beings that is too individualistic to support a just community, as Sandel alleges. Rawls believes that his theory of justice 'justice as fairness' is an improvement of utilitarian theories because he claims that his theory considers all individuals, thus making the 'distinction between persons' and that the lack of consideration for individual rights in utilitarian theories is unjust; therefore he believes his theory is better. In this paper I shall try to examine Rawls' claim from a neutral perspective and assess both the arguments for and against utilitarianism with respect to its theories consideration (or indeed lack of)...
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