The envy and the justice in the well-ordered society

Abstract

John Rawls, in developing his theory of justice as fairness, devoted efforts to demonstrating that his political conception of justice is intrinsically stable by creating the conditions, so that “excusable general envy” does not proliferate in a well-ordered, just and unequal society. That solution was contested by Jean-Pierre Dupuy, according to whom Rawls would have been naïve in believing that the solution of the “problem of justice” would also solve the “problem of envy”. This paper aims at investigating the relevance of such observations, considering whether or not the solution to the “problem of justice” is also an effective way of dealing with the “problem of envy”. The thesis to be defended is that, despite Rawls's efforts, the risks arising from envy are only partially avoided, since the envy that can destabilize the political conception of justice is not limited to “excusable general envy”.