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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... rules of conduct as binding and who for the most part act in accordance with them . Suppose further that these rules specify a system of cooperation designed to advance the good of those taking part in it . Then , although a society is ...
... rules and practices of private associations or for those of 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 ...
... rules of the social system . On this conception of society separate individuals are thought of as so many different lines along which rights and duties are to be assigned and scarce means of satisfaction allocated in accordance with rules ...
... rules , for weighing these principles against one another : we are simply to strike a balance by intuition , by what seems to us most nearly right . Or if there are priority rules , these are thought to be more or less trivial and of no ...
... rules . To emphasize the direct appeal to our considered judgment in the balancing of principles , it seems appropriate to think of intuitionism in this more general fashion . How far such a view is committed to certain epistemological ...