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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... effectively regulated by a public conception of justice . That is , it is a society in which ( 1 ) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice , and ( 2 ) the basic social institutions generally ...
... effective desire to act justly . Aristotle's definition clearly presupposes , however , an account of what properly belongs to a person and of what is due to him . Now such entitlements are , I believe , very often derived from social ...
... effective means to given ends . I shall modify this concept to some extent , as explained later ( $ 25 ) , but one must try to avoid introducing into it any controversial ethical elements . The initial situation must be characterized by ...
... effective average . Robert Nozick discusses some of the problems in developing this kind of intuitionism in “ Moral Complications and Moral Structures , " Natural Law Forum , vol . 13 ( 1968 ) . Intuitionism in the traditional sense ...
... effectively and impartially administered which is just or unjust . The institution as an abstract object is just or unjust in the sense that any realization of it would be just or unjust . An institution exists at a certain time and ...