Product Description

This work consists of two parts: the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," first published in 1997, and "The Law of Peoples," a major reworking of a much shorter article by the same name published in 1993. Taken together, they are the culmination of more than 50 years of reflection on liberalism anon some of the most pressing problems of our times by John Rawls. The first essay explains why the constraints of public reason, a concept first discussed in "Political Liberalism" (1993), are ones that holders of both religious and non-religious comprehensive views can reasonably endorse. it is rawls's most detailed account of how a modern constitutional democracy, based on a liberal political conception, could and would be viewed as legitimate by reasonable citizens who on religious, philosophical, or moral grounds do not themselves accept a liberal comprehensive doctrine - such as that of Kant, or Mill, or Rawls's own "justice as fairness", presented in "A Theory of Justice" (1971). The second essay extends the idea of a social contract to the society of peoples and lays out the general principles that can and should be accepted by both liberal and non-liberal societies as the standard for regulating their behaviour toward one another. In particular, it draws a crucial distinction between basic human rights and the rights of each citizen of a liberal constitutional democracy. It explores the terms under which such a society may appropriately wage war against an "outlaw society", and discusses the moral grounds for rendering assistance to non-liberal societies burdened by unfavourable political and economic conditions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #159961 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Review
"[These essays are] some of [Rawls's] strongest published expressions of feeling...the final products of a remarkably pure and concentrated career...The writings of John Rawls, whom it is now safe to describe as the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century...owe their influence to the fact that their depth and their insight repay the close attention that their uncompromising theoretical weight and erudition demand." - Thomas Nagel, New Republic"

About the Author
John Rawls is James Bryant Conant University Professor, Emeritus, Harvard University. He is the author of a number of books from Harvard University Press, including A Theory of Justice, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Collected Papers, and Justice As Fairness.