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 93
... social union of social unions and the priority of liberty . I had profitable discussions with David Richards on the problems of political duty and obligation . Although supererogation is not a central topic of the book , I have been ...
... social cooperation and with a brief account of the primary subject of justice , the basic structure of society . I then present the main idea of justice as fairness , a theory of justice that generalizes and carries to a higher level of ...
... social interests . The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one ; analogously , an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice . Being first ...
... social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these principles . In this case while men may put forth excessive demands on one another , they nevertheless acknowledge a common point of view from which their ...
... social ends in ways that are efficient and consistent with justice . And finally , the scheme of social cooperation must be stable : it must be more or less regularly complied with and its basic rules willingly acted upon ; and when ...