December 2016 LSAT Section 2 Question 4

With which one of the following statements would both Rawls and the author of the passage be most likely to agree?

jordanbirnholtz on June 14, 2020

Support for answer E

Hey there! Can I get some guidance on how to rule out answer choice E? It seems like the need to re-distribute goods is something that both Rawls and the author support, despite the author’s reservations about that process. How did you discern that that was not the case?

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shunhe on June 14, 2020

Hi @jordanbirnholtz,

Thanks for the question! So we’re asked for something that Rawls and the author of the passage would agree on. Let’s take a look at (E), which says that it’s fair to sacrifice the individual’s interest if doing so will maximize the satisfaction of the majority. Is this what Rawls thinks? Take a look at lines 13-16. Rawls is complaining about the utilitarian view, and his criticism is that under this view, there’s no reason that the violation of the liberty of a few might not be made right by the greater good shared by the many. In other words, he thinks that this reasoning is wrong; he thinks that you shouldn’t be able to violate the liberties of a few by appealing to a greater overall good by the many. So this view is actually the opposite of what Rawls thinks, and so we don’t even need to know what the author thinks to know that answer choice (E) is wrong.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.