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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... basis of justice that to which men would consent . Here we may note a curious anomaly . It is customary to think of utilitarianism as individualistic , and certainly there are good reasons for this . The utilitarians were strong ...
... basis for deciding whether the determination of fair wages makes sense in view of the taxes to be imposed . How we weigh the precepts in one group is adjusted to how we weigh them in another . In this way we have managed to introduce a ...
... basis for adjudicating claims is to that extent obscure . Thus our object should be to formulate a conception of justice which , however much it ition , ethical or prudential , tends to make our considered judgments of justice converge ...
... basis . Moral philosophy must be free to use contingent assumptions and general facts as it pleases . There is no other way to give an account of our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium . This is the conception of the subject ...
... basis for determining mutual expectations . Moreover , in a well - ordered society , one effectively regulated by a shared conception of justice , there is also a public understanding as to what is just and unjust . Later I assume that ...