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 6-10 of 92
... suppose with utilitarianism that the good is defined as the satisfaction of rational desire . ) Of course , it is not impossible that the most good is produced but it would be a coincidence . The question of attaining the greatest net ...
... suppose that allocative efficiency , full employment , a larger national income , and its more equal distribution are accepted as social ends . Then , given the desired weighting of these aims , and the existing institutional setup ...
... suppose that any principle in the order is to be maximized subject to the condition that the preceding principles are fully satisfied . As an important special case I shall , in fact , propose an ordering of this kind by ranking the ...
... suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception . So for the purposes of this book , the views of the reader and the author are the only ones that count . The opinions of others are used only to clear our own ...
... suppose a certain basic structure to exist . Its rules satisfy a certain conception of justice . We may not ourselves accept its principles ; we may even find them odious and unjust . But they are principles of justice in the sense that ...