Abstract
The paper analyses and develops John Rawls’s defence of his theory of justice against the conservative objection that egalitarian conceptions of social justice are an expression of envy. The defence involves the following claims: (1) The content of the difference principle does not match an essential property of envy. (2) The parties in the original position are not motivated by envy. (3) None of the conditions imposed on the original position arise from envy. Next, it is argued that there are reasons to suppose that the parties in the original position would choose a more egalitarian principle of distributive justice than the difference principle. These reasons are grounded in the claim that self respect is the most important primary good and in the fact that the level of economic inequalities is negatively correlated with self respect among the least advantaged members of society. It is shown that even though the content of the more egalitarian principle matches the essential property of envy, the conservative objection remains unjustified.
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