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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... notion of primary goods based on the conception discussed in Chapter VII is the result . I also owe him thanks , along with Norman Daniels , for pointing out difficulties with my account of utilitarianism as a basis for individual ...
... notion here is that this structure contains various social positions and that men born into different positions have ... notions of merit or desert . It is these inequalities , presumably inevitable in the basic structure of any society ...
... notion . 3. THE MAIN IDEA OF THE THEORY OF JUSTICE My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract as found , say , in Locke ...
... notion offers a way to approach these questions which are certainly of the first importance ; and I shall have to put them aside . We must recognize the limited scope of justice as fairness and of the general type of view that it ...
... conception is also an intuitive notion that suggests its own elaboration , so that led on by it we are drawn to define more clearly the standpoint from which we can best interpret moral relationships . We 21 4. The Original Position.