John Rawls’s Political Ethics and Some Implications to the Educational Welfare of Cameroon

Abstract

Citizens in a democratic society have and believe in different worldviews. They have different conception of right and wrong, religion, lifestyle and even forms of interpersonal relationship but there exist only one law within a country. Rawls brings forth the idea of political liberalism and wonders how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can remain stable when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines. He holds that the need to impose a unified law poses the problem of legitimacy and stability and if successfully put in place, justice must have been done to the citizens. He developed a concept that he deemed the ‘original position’, which gives people a chance to decide on the principles of justice from a ‘veil of ignorance’. This original position is a hypothetical situation where no one has any advantage over another. Behind this veil, all individuals are free and equal beings in the society. They do not know anything of themselves, their natural abilities, or their position in the society in which they live. Would they choose differently if they weren’t aware of these things? Would their society be less judgmental? According to Rawls, the people in the original position, behind the said veil of ignorance would adopt principles that would and regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages in the society. The present instability in the Cameroon’s educational welfare could have been avoided if these social services were equally distributed.