ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the incompatibility between practices of private discrimination (for example, discrimination at work and in private associations) and the two parts of Rawls' second principle of justice, the fair equality of opportunity (FEO) and the difference principle (DP). I submit that discrimination at workplace and other sectors that are crucial for the development of natural talents (such as education and health care) only violates FEO when possessing the general effect of rendering substantially unequal the occupational chances of citizens with similar innate talents and motivation. I also point to some difficulties in proscribing, according to FEO, two common instances of discrimination, reaction qualification and proxy discrimination. Regarding the DP, my main statement is that a ban on private discrimination is related to the primary good of the social bases of self-respect and is circumscribed to instances of demeaning discrimination, defined, according to Hellman (2008)HELLMAN, D. "When Is Discrimination Wrong?" Edição Kindle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008., as discrimination whose expressive meaning is denying people belonging to a given group their equal moral status.
Keywords
Private Discrimination; Rawls; Fair Equality of Opportunity; Difference Principle