ABSTRACT
Since our understanding of corporate social responsibility presupposes a conception of justice that does not view acts of corporate responsibility as simply charitable acts, but rather as legitimate expectations of citizens of the modern world, questions of justice homogonous to this approach border on how individuals in the modern state distribute the burdens and benefits of social and economic cooperation. Such questions would encompass what the law should permit or prohibit and how society as a whole should be regulated. In contemporary political philosophy, the works of the late American philosopher John Rawls take these questions of justice very seriously. Nevertheless, we are equally interested in the general exposition of the principles of utility (utilitarianism). This will help us understand some of the foundational, philosophical theories informing the corporate social responsibility debate. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate that Rawls's contractarian notion of social justice (or justice as fairness) correlates with the ideals of CSR, while the dominant moral theory of the last century—namely, utilitarianism—may not. We proceed by tracing some theoretical and historical trajectories leading to the emergence of the social justice movement in the history of Western philosophy.
