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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... expectations . And by what criteria are we to judge the justice of custom itself and the legitimacy of these expectations ? To reach some measure of understanding and agreement which 35 1. Intuitionism.
... expectations , it is necessary to move to a more general scheme for determining the balance of precepts , or at least for confining it within narrower limits . Thus we can consider the problems of justice by reference to certain ends of ...
... Georgescu - Roegen , " Choice , Expectations , and Measurability , ” Quarterly Journal of Economics , vol . 68 ( 1954 ) , esp . pp . 510–520 . it would render otiose all subsequent criteria . I shall 43 8. The Priority Problem.
... expectations of the least advantaged social group . Of course , the specification of this group is not very exact , and certainly our prudential judgments likewise give considerable scope to intuition , since we may not be able to ...
... 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 the principles of justice are ...