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. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 65
... 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 , then , by the role of its principles ...
... ethical works beginning with The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals as definitive of the contract tradition . For all of its greatness , Hobbes's Leviathan raises special problems . A general historical survey is provided by J. W. ...
... ethical elements . The initial situation must be characterized by stipulations that are widely accepted . In working out the conception of justice as fairness one main task clearly is to determine which principles of justice would be ...
... ethical theories and of setting forth their underlying assumptions . Justice as fairness is an example of what I have called a contract theory . Now there may be an objection to the term “ contract ” and related expressions , but I ...
... ethical system , that is , to a system including principles for all the virtues and not only for justice . Now for the most part I shall consider only principles of justice and others closely related to them ; I make no attempt to ...