The Sense of Justice

John Rawls, "The Sense of Justice," Philosophical Review 72 (1963): 281–305.

In Emile Rousseau asserts that the sense of justice is no mere moral conception formed by the understanding alone, but a true sentiment of the heart enlightened by reason, the natural outcome of our primitive affections. In the first part of this paper I set out a psychological construction to illustrate the way in which Rousseau’s thesis might be true. In the second part I use several of the ideas elaborated in formulating this construction to consider two questions which arise in the systematic analysis of the concept of justice.

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