Rawls and Knight: Connections and Influence in A Theory of Justice1

1 I would like to thank David Levy, Erik Angner, and Ross Emmett for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I should especially note David Levy's generosity in making available the scans of Rawls' copy of The Ethics of Competition and other essays, and for accompanying encouragement. 1 For [Rawls], as for the Marxists, positivists, and Utilitarians, moral systems are creations of human societies, designed to solve problems that arise when people live together. No doubt we all agree that extremes of wealth and poverty are unjust-especially when they do not correspond with personal effort or sacrifice-and are bad in other ways. The question is, what can we do about it? Can the rules of the economic game be so changed that the winnings, symbolic and real (and the former are not much inferior in importance), will accord better with some accepted or defensible criterion of justice? And can it be done without wrecking the game itself, as a game, and as a producer of the fruits on which we all live?-Frank Knight, " The Role of Principles in Economics and Politics " 3