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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... various conceptions of justice and as being specified by the role which these different sets of principles , these different conceptions , have in common . " Those who hold different conceptions of justice can , then , still agree that ...
... various conceptions of justice settles no important questions . It simply helps to identify the role of the principles of social justice . Some measure of agreement in conceptions of justice is , however , not the only prerequisite for ...
... various social positions and that men born into different positions have different expectations of life determined , in part , by the political system as well as by economic and social circumstances . In this way the institutions of ...
... various informal conventions and customs of everyday life ; they may not elucidate the justice , or perhaps better , the fairness of voluntary cooperative arrangements or procedures for making contractual agreements . The conditions for ...
... various conceptions of justice are the outgrowth of different notions of society against the background of opposing views of the natural necessities and opportunities of human life . Fully to understand a conception of justice we must ...