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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... course , actually work through this process . Still , we may think of the interpretation of the original position that I shall present as the result of such a hypothetical course of reflection . It represents the attempt to accommodate ...
... course , the only way of doing so ) is to 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 ...
... course we are still left with an appeal to intuition in the balancing of the higherorder ends of policy themselves . Different weightings for these are not by any means trivial variations but often correspond to profoundly opposed ...
... course , achieve it . This explanation of reflective equilibrium suggests straightway a number of further questions . For example , does a reflective equilibrium ( in the sense of the philosophical ideal ) exist ? If so , is it unique ...
... unacceptable . My conjecture is that the contract doctrine properly worked out can fill this gap . I think justice as fairness an endeavor in this direction . Of course the contract theory as I shall present it 52 Justice as Fairness.