The Criteria for Distributional Justice: A Comparative Study of John Rawls and Shahid Motahari Viewpoints

John Rawls is one of the biggest political philosophers in social justice field and Shahid Morteza Motahari is one of the Islamic Scholars in 20st century. Although none of them is economist, there are noteworthy criterions of economic just distribution in their works. Rawls believed the initial facilities-particularly basic freedoms-should be distributed equally. He accepted the unequally distributions provided that incomes and efforts move proportional to each other and his inclination was toward the lowest income levels. Furthermore, Shahid Motahari described equal initial facilities distribution, distribution according to the people’s merit and assets redistribution based on social harmony as three stages of distribution system. Considering the nature of justice as something beyond religion, the equal initial facilities distribution, according merit distribution and the regard to the low-income people are the important similar points; and the origin of legitimacy of justice, economic redistribution role and concepts of freedoms are the important different points of these two thinkers’ viewpoints.