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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... persons might make together , namely , with the choice of the first principles of a conception of justice which is to regulate all subsequent criticism and reform of institutions . Then , having chosen a conception of justice , we can ...
... persons in the initial situation would choose its principles over those of the other for the role of justice . Conceptions of justice are to be ranked by their acceptability to persons so circumstanced . Understood in this way the ...
... persons into one coherent system of desire ; it is by this construction that many persons are fused into one . Endowed with ideal powers of sympathy and imagination , the impartial spectator is the perfectly rational individual who ...
... person ranks arrangement D equal with C , the second judges D superior . This conception of justice imposes no limitations on what are the correct weightings ; and therefore it allows different persons to arrive at a different balance ...
... person making the judgment is presumed , then , to have the ability , the opportunity , and the desire to reach a correct decision ( or at least , not the desire not to ) . Moreover , the criteria that identify these judgments are not ...