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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... assume that a deeper understanding can be gained in no other way , and that the nature and aims of a perfectly just society is the fundamental part of the theory of justice . Now admittedly the concept of the basic structure is somewhat ...
... assume that any reasonably complete ethical theory must include principles for this fundamental problem and that these principles , whatever they are , constitute its doctrine of justice . The concept of justice I take to be defined ...
... assume that the parties do not know their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities . The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance . This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in ...
... assume , for one thing , that there is a broad measure of agreement that principles of justice should be chosen under certain conditions . To justify a particular description of the initial situation one shows that it incorporates these ...
... assume that eventually we shall find a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted . This state of affairs I refer to ...