A Theory of Justice: Original EditionJohn Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition—justice as fairness—and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. “Each person,” writes Rawls, “possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.” Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls’s theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. |
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... adopt a given form of government , but to accept certain moral principles . Moreover , the undertakings referred to are purely hypothetical : a contract view holds that certain principles would be accepted in a well - defined initial ...
... adopted . The aim is to rule out those principles that it would be rational to propose for acceptance , however little the chance of success , only if one knew certain things that are irrelevant from the standpoint of justice . For ...
... adopted . Together with the veil of ignorance , these conditions define the principles of justice as those which rational persons concerned to advance their interests would consent to as equals when none are known to be advantaged or ...
... adopt for society as a 12. On this point see Sidgwick , The Methods of Ethics , pp . 416f . 13. See J. S. Mill , Utilitarianism , ch . V , last two pars . whole the principle of rational choice for one man . 26 Justice as Fairness.
... adopted , and therefore that contract theory leads eventually to a deeper and more roundabout justification of ... adopt instead , for the kinds of reasons previously sketched , the two principles of justice already mentioned . In any ...