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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... apply . These principles , then , regulate the choice of a political constitution and the main elements of the economic and social system . The justice of a social scheme depends essentially on how fundamental rights and duties are ...
... apply to what is certainly a part of the basic structure as intuitively understood ; I shall then try to extend the application of these principles so that they cover what would appear to be the main elements of this structure . Perhaps ...
... apply . In these preliminary remarks I have distinguished the concept of justice as meaning a proper balance between competing claims from a conception of justice as a set of related principles for identifying the relevant ...
... apply directly to the most important case , the justice of the basic structure . There is no conflict with the traditional notion . 3. THE MAIN IDEA OF THE THEORY OF JUSTICE My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalizes ...
... Apply in Practice , ” in Kant's Political Writings , ed . Hans Reiss and trans . by H. B. Nisbet ( Cambridge , The University Press , 1970 ) , pp . 73–87 . See Georges Vlachos , La Pensée politique de Kant ( Paris , Presses ...