Abstract
The article introduces John Rawls’ book A Theory of Justice, which is perhaps that contribution in political philosophy that attracted the most attention in the twentieth century. After a brief biographical introduction, Part 2 presents the allocation principles John Rawls advocated. Part 3 presents Rawls’ conception of society and the individual, as an introduction to the rest of the argument presented in Part 4. Section 5 takes up his theory of justification, and Part 6 points to three areas where the more recent book Justice as Fairness differs somewhat from A Theory of Justice. Section 7 presents some of the criticisms that have been raised, and Section 8 points to some lasting contributions of Rawls’ theory.
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Notes
- 1.
An original version of this article appeared as an introduction to John Rawls : Rettferdighet som rimelighet [Erin Kelly (ed.) (2003) Justice as Fairness] translated by Kai Swensen . Oslo: Pax, pp. 11–36. The present version was developed under the auspices of MultiRights—an ERC Advanced Grant (269841) on the Legitimacy of Multi-Level Human Rights (223274) Judiciary—www.MultiRights.net; and PluriCourts, a Research Council of Norway Centre of Excellence—www.PluriCourts.net.
- 2.
Presentations of the social contract tradition include Hampton (1993) and Freeman (1990). Early classic sources include Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1978), John Locke (1963), Immanuel Kant (1980 and 1965). Thomas Hobbes (1968) is also in the social contract tradition, but appears to justify moral norms from non-normative premises; cf. David Gauthier (1986). Among recent contributors to the tradition are Ronald Dworkin (1981a, b, 1987); Brian Barry (1989, 1995); Joshua Cohen (1989), Cohen and Rogers (1995) and T. M. Scanlon (1998).
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Follesdal, A. (2015). John Rawls’ Theory of Justice as Fairness. In: Fløistad, G. (eds) Philosophy of Justice. Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9175-5_18
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