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 91
... less comprehensive social groups . They may be irrelevant for the various informal conventions and customs of everyday life ; they may not elucidate the justice , or perhaps better , the fairness of voluntary cooperative arrangements or ...
... less in order that others may prosper . But there is no injustice in the greater benefits earned by a few provided that the situation of persons not so fortunate is thereby improved . The intuitive idea is that since everyone's well ...
... less assurance as to what is the correct distribution of wealth and authority . Here we may be looking for a way to remove our doubts . We can check an interpretation of the initial situation , then , by the capacity of its principles ...
... less satisfied . Thus , moving along either of the indifference curves in figure 1 , we see that as equality decreases a larger and larger increase in the sum of satisfactions is required to compensate for a further decrease in equality ...
... less match one's existing judgments except for minor discrepancies , or whether one is to be presented with all possible descriptions to which one might plausibly conform one's judgments together with all relevant philosophical ...