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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... EQUAL LIBERTY 195 31. The Four - Stage Sequence 195 32. The Concept of Liberty 201 33. Equal Liberty of Conscience 205 34. Toleration and the Common Interest 211 35. Toleration of the Intolerant 216 36. Political Justice and the ...
... equal persons whose relations with respect to one another were fair . They could all view their arrangements as meeting the stipulations which they would acknowledge in an initial situation that embodies widely accepted and reasonable ...
... equal rights in Locke is precisely to ensure that the only permissible departures from the state of nature are those which respect these rights and serve the common interest . It is clear that all the transformations from the state of ...
... equal liberty prior to the principle regulating economic and social inequalities . This means , in effect , that the basic structure of society is to arrange the inequalities of wealth and authority in ways consistent with the equal ...
... equal liberties of citizenship and those that specify and establish social and economic inequalities . The basic liberties of citizens are , roughly speaking , political liberty ( the right to vote and to be eligible for public office ) ...