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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... advantages irrespective of its permanent effects on his own basic rights and interests . Thus it seems that the principle of utility is incompatible with the conception of social cooperation among equals for mutual advantage . It ...
... advantages should be such as to draw forth the willing cooperation of everyone taking part in it , including those ... advantage , we are led to these principles . They express the result of leaving aside those aspects of the social ...
... advantages won by social cooperation ; they apply to the relations among several persons or groups . The word " contract " suggests this plurality as well as the condition that the appropriate division of advantages must be in ...
... advantages is to be maximized.13 Yet , as with all other precepts , those of justice are derivative from the one end of attaining the greatest balance of satisfaction . Thus there is no reason in principle why the greater gains of some ...
... advantages enjoyed by individuals . Yet utilitarianism is not individualistic , at least when arrived at by the more natural course of reflection , in that , by conflating all systems of desires , it applies to society the principle of ...