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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... further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association . These principles are to regulate all further agreements ; they specify the kinds of social cooperation ...
... further that particular inclinations and aspirations , and persons ' conceptions of their good do not affect the principles adopted . The aim is to rule out those principles that it would be rational to propose for acceptance , however ...
... further premises equally reasonable . But if so , and these principles match our considered convictions of justice , then so far well and good . But presumably there will be discrepancies . In this case we have a choice . We can either ...
... further cases of such an ordering . The theory of utility in economics began with an implicit recognition of the hierarchical structure of wants and the priority of moral considerations . This is clear in W. S. Jevons , The Theory of ...
... further coherence into our common convictions of justice . Indeed , once we look at things from the standpoint of the initial situation , the priority problem is not that of how to cope with the complexity of already given moral facts ...