A Theory of Justice

I bought my copy of his book at the University of Virginia bookstore in Charlottesville in June 1973. It was considered a “must read” by philosophy students at the time and continues to be so regarded. I still have my copy on a shelf at home.

Since the appearance of his book in 1971, John Rawls has been acknowledged as America’s — perhaps the world’s — leading political philosopher. Where once the foundations of western civilization went from Plato to Freud, nowadays it is from Plato to Rawls. Most American and British and ever more European students of politics or philosophy study his ideas. The story of “How John Rawls Revived Political Philosophy and Rejuvenated Liberalism” is part of academic legend.

Rawls, a Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Harvard University, set the stage for an entire generation of thinkers in their discussions of justice as fairness. He has described a method for the moral evaluation of social and political institutions using elements of both Kantian and utilitarian philosophy.

Rawls destroyed the notion that political philosophy was dead and revived the discussion among intellectuals about the nature of justice. His book presents a grand theory with a comprehensive discussion of normative standards (standards based on the average or median achievement of any large group in any particular category, in this case social) which he tried to apply to the idea of justice (simply defined as giving every man their just due).

Rawls’ political philosophy is a continuation of  social contract theory. He espouses this idea in contrast to the utilitarian mindset that permeated much of the political thought of his day. His main objection to utility as a weighing mechanism is that utility “puts no restriction on the subordination of some people’s interests to those of others, except that the net outcome should be good.” Rawls has problems with this.

Rawls’ philosophy is deeply rooted in Kantian thought. He believes firmly that all people are “ends-in-themselves” and that there should be definite, generalized rules that stop the continual mistreatment of others. He addresses the problem of the determination of these rules in “A Theory of Justice,” where he sets out his idea of a “well ordered society.”

His concept builds upon the theories of Locke and others by beginning a social order with some type of contract. Rawls’ contract is explicitly hypothetical, a mere thought experiment that nonetheless creates concrete guidelines for a society.

Rawls argues that the rational individual would only choose to establish a society that would at least conform to the following two rules: