John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (1971) is widely credited with having revived post–World War II Anglo American political philosophy. This book together with his later writings are routinely judged to constitute the most important body of work in that field. Indeed, with the collapse of Second World and Third World socialist ideologico-political alternatives, liberalism in one form or another h...

In this article, in order to demonstrate the pragmatic elements of Rawls’s viewpoint, the developmental path of his A Theory of Justice shall first be investigated. This development has two phases: In the first phase, justice has an ethical-philosophical basis. In A Theory of Justice, this phase is specifically shown under the title of theory of justice. In the second phase, justice has no phil...

John Rawls rejects prejusticial conceptions of distributive desert on the grounds that such conceptions are immoral and impractical. Prejusticial understandings of desert claim that desert can be understood prior to and independently of justice in social institutions, and take legitimate desert claims to provide standards for evaluating social arrangements. Some philosophers have interpreted Ra...

The present paper revisits the issue of rational decision making in John Rawls’ original position. Drawing on Isaac Levi’s theory of decision, I discuss how we can defend Rawls against John C. Harsanyi’s charge that maximin reasoning in the original position is irrational. The discussion suggests that systematic application of Levi’s theory is likely to have important consequences for ethics an...

Most prominent models of economic justice (and especially those proposed by Harsanyi and Rawls) are based on the assumption that impartiality is required for making moral decisions. However, although Harsanyi and Rawls agree on that, and furthermore agree on the fact that impartiality can be obtained under appropriate conditions of ignorance, they strongly disagree on the consequences of these ...

In his book The Law of Peoples, John Rawls described an international society inwhich there are enemies and friends seeking their goals by deferent means.Rawls introduced us principles as the fundamental rights of every people. Thepeople who reserve these rights can sustain in the world. Although this theoryis supposed to be part of liberal foreign policy, the peoples Rawls talks aboutare not n...

in this article, in order to demonstrate the pragmatic elements of rawls’s viewpoint, the developmental path of his a theory of justice shall first be investigated. this development has two phases: in the first phase, justice has an ethical-philosophical basis. in a theory of justice, this phase is specifically shown under the title of theory of justice. in the second phase, justice has no phil...

Cohen G (2008) Rescuing justice and equality. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Freeman S (2006) The law of peoples, social cooperation, human rights, and distributive justice. Soc Philos Pol 23(1):29–68 Freeman S (2007) Rawls. Routledge, New York Kant I (1785) Groundwork of themetaphysics ofmorals (trans: GregorM). Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997 Kant I (1797) The metaphysics of m...

In a passage in A Theory of Justice, which has become increasingly influential in recent years, John Rawls (1971) noted an analogy between moral philosophy and grammar. Moral philosophy, or at least the first stage of moral philosophy, Rawls maintained, can be thought of as the attempt to describe our moral capacity – the capacity which underlies “the potentially infinite number and variety of ...