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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... express my deep appreciation for its support in 1969–1970 , and for that of the Guggenheim and Kendall foundations in 1964–1965 . I am grateful to Anna Tower and to Margaret Griffin for helping me with the final manuscript . Without the ...
... express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice . No doubt they are expressed too strongly . In any event I wish to inquire whether these contentions or others similar to them are sound , and if so how they can be accounted ...
... express the result of leaving aside those aspects of the social world that seem arbitrary from a moral point of view . The problem of the choice of principles , however , is extremely difficult . I do not expect the answer I shall ...
... express . At any time we can enter the original position , so to speak , simply by following a certain procedure , namely , by arguing for principles of justice in accordance with these restrictions . It seems reasonable to suppose that ...
... express what we are prepared to regard as limits on fair terms of social cooperation . One way to look at the idea of the original position , therefore , is to see it as an expository device which sums up the meaning of these conditions ...