Product Description

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls is one of the books by which our age will be remembered: perhaps the most important work of moral and political philosophy of the twentieth century, a classic to stand alongside Kant and Mill. Rawls argues that the correct principles of justice are those that would be agreed to by free and rational persons, placed in the 'original position' behind a veil of ignorance: not knowing their own place in society; their class, race, or sex; their
abilities, intelligence, or strengths; or even their conception of the good. Accordingly, he derives two principles of justice to regulate the distribution of liberties, and of social and economic goods.

In this revised edition the work is presented as Rawls himself wishes it to be transmitted to posterity, with numerous minor revisions and amendments and a new Preface in which Rawls reflects on his presentation of his thesis and explains how and why he has revised it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #33481 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. 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 19th 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. --Christine Buttery

About the Author
John Rawls is James Bryant Conant University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University.

Customer Reviews

This classic on moral philosphy is an essential buy.
John Rawls was deservingly noted for his contributions to philosophy with the National Humanities Medal in 1999. This remarkable book examines justice in society through the prisms of utilitarianism and social contract theory: evaluating the two it clearly argues for the recognition of "individual" experience. It is drawn from journal essays written over a number of years, and is divided into three parts: Theory, Institutions, and Endsthink. This revised edition is one of the most substantial contributions to moral philosophy of the past few decades. It is a very persuasive book, being very well argued and carefully composed, with possible objections and counterarguments fairly weighed and considered: at the same time it conveys a moral vision and a ruling idea, maintaining the strongly marked personal attitude to experience. Although the book is firmly within the traditions of analytical philosophy, and has the virtues of this genre, there is no pretense of a degree of precision that the subject matter does not admit.

A thorough analytic treatment of social ethics.
Rawls exposition is clear; He defines Justice as the first virtue of society, and then defines Justice as Fairness, and proceeds from there to a description of a set of formally fair procedures for constructing a just society. Chief among those is his doctrine of "The Original Position", i.e. the situation in which a person takes no thought for personal advantage, including one's own in-born abilities, and then attempts to construct an ethical framework to guide the constitution of society. Although the work is vague, it is because he necessarily works at a very high level of abstraction. I also believe his work is -wrong- (because I think valuing human life is the first virtue of human society, not justice), but it is the clearest description of Kantian analytic social theory ever presented. As such, if it -is- wrong, it is because analytic social theories are wrong as a class, not because Rawls made mistakes. A very good book.

A difficult masterpeice
This is an extremely rich and thoroughly dense work of moral and political philosophy. It is regarded in philosophy departments across the anglo-saxon world as the greatest single work of moral or political philosophy of the 20th Century and certainly deserves its accolades.

I will not pretend to have read the whole thing, and anyone who claims to is frankly a liar. But the crux is basically an overhaul of traditional liberalism, bringing to moral and political thought a complicated and profoundly rational structure. This structure then acts by weighing up various political or moral issues facing the modern world, allowing us to see which is more just. The key principle resulting is 'justice as fairness.'

The starting point is the rational decision agents would come to over matters, when impeded by a 'veil of ignorance' as to who or where they are in society. The decisions they then may or may not make constitute the bulk of the book and are vastly intricate. At the other end, Rawls comes up with a liberal model for society with a maximin principle governing it. The greatest moral imperative being the maximising of the worst off. It is arguable whether the rigmarole Rawls goes through is worth it for such an obvious and relatively uninteresting principle. But the rigmarole is the point, since it sures up a left of centre political philosophy against the right wingers who would attack it (notably Nozick in 'Anarchy, State and Utopia'.)

The work is undoubtedly a masterpeice, though less enjoyable to the general reader than some good old Marx, Rousseau or Mill.