ABSTRACT
John Rawls's refers to positive and negative natural duties, but the natural duties are not at the origin of the practise of justice. The approaches of justice based on a calculus, dividing the responsibility between an individual share and a social one are perfectly within the Rawlsian tradition. This chapter shows in what sense contemporary theories of social justice are based on the priority of rights. It emphasises that, in such an interpretation, obligations are only a remainder used for a second-rate calculus. The chapter discusses the idea that these approaches overlook reflection on the moral subject, and draws several consequences from it, particularly by opposing the ethics of Just to the ethics of justice by equity. Rawls' theory of justice gives priority to rights over duty. Many contemporary theories of justice, amongst them the theory of Rawls, are alternatives to utilitarianism.
