After a first, rather modest empirical look in Chapter One at some of the numbers and situations of unhealthy very poor children, we now need to investigate in Chapter Two some of the conceptual resources in a general theory of justice for understanding more fully the urgent demands on just what social justice itself must look like today.

Primary Goods

We begin with a sketch of the most important theory of justice in the twentieth century, that of John Rawls

The Justice as Fairness Project

John Rawls's (1921–2002) initial project was to articulate the nature of justice in a just society. In trying to elaborate his first reflections, Rawls started with a thought experiment. He asked his readers to imagine a situation of thoroughgoing impartiality in which persons are called upon to judge fundamental issues with a maximum of fairness.

The situation he proposed we imagine is one in which free and rational persons, while knowledgeable about the general facts of the natural and social sciences, are nonetheless completely ignorant of every particularity that concerns their own interests as individuals. That is, the persons in such an imaginary situation are incapable of knowing what might specifically be in their own individual interests and hence are capable of disinterested judgment.