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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... exist that prevent further violations and tend to restore the arrangement . Now it is evident that these three problems are connected with that of justice . In the absence of a certain measure of agreement on what is just and unjust ...
... exist no higher - order constructive criteria for determining the proper emphasis for the competing principles of justice . While the complexity of the moral facts requires a number of distinct principles , there is no single standard ...
... exists no expressible ethical conception which underlies these weights . A geometrical figure or a mathematical function ... exist . To be sure , the notion of a recognizably ethical principle is vague , although it is easy to give many ...
... exists any useful and explicit solution to the priority problem . I now turn to a brief discussion of this topic . 8. THE PRIORITY PROBLEM We have seen that intuitionism raises the question of the extent to which it is possible to give ...
... exist . Contrary judgments , however , raise a difficulty , since the basis for adjudicating claims is to that extent obscure . Thus our object should be to formulate a conception of justice which , however much it ition , ethical or ...