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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... rank ; and the moral doctrine they worked out was framed to meet the needs of their wider interests and to fit into a comprehensive scheme . Those who criticized them often did so on a much narrower front . They vii Preface.
Original Edition John Rawls. tion , give the best picture of the doctrine . So far this is about a third of the whole and comprises most of the essentials of the theory . There is a danger , however , that without consideration of the ...
... doctrine of just war , and the justification of the various ways of opposing unjust regimes , ranging from civil disobedience and militant resistance to revolution and rebellion . Also included here are questions of compensatory justice ...
... doctrine of justice . The concept of justice I take to be defined , then , by the role of its principles in assigning rights and duties and in defining the appropriate division of social advantages . A conception of justice is an ...
... doctrine . The same should be true of the term “ contract ” applied to moral theories . As I have mentioned , to understand it one has to keep in mind that it implies a certain level of abstraction . In particular , the content of the ...