Tag: Justice

Topics

Books

Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics

– John Rawls, "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics," Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 177–97.
The question with which we shall be concerned can be stated as follows: Does there exist a reasonable decision procedure which is sufficiently strong, at least in some cases, to determine… More

Justice as Fairness

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness," Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653-662.
The fundamental idea in the concept of justice is that of fairness. It is this aspect of justice for which utilitarianism, in its classical form, is unable to account, but which is… More

Justice as Fairness (Expanded Version)

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness" (Expanded Version), Philosophical Review 67 (1958): 164–94.
It might seem at first sight that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is more fundamental than the other.… More

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… More

Distributive Justice

– The first version of this paper was published in Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series. eds., P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman, pp. 58–82. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1967. This essay and the essay “Distributive Justice: Some Addenda” were combined to form a second “Distributive Justice” in Economic Justice, ed., E. Phelps, pp. 319–62. London: Penguin Books, 1973.

Distributive Justice: Some Addenda

– John Rawls, "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda," Natural Law Forum 13 (1968): 51–71.
On this occasion I wish to elaborate further the conception of distributive justice that I have already sketched elsewhere. This conception derives from the ideal of social justice… More

A Theory of Justice

– John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Revised 1999).
Summary from Publisher: Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of… More

A New Philosophy of the Just Society

– Stuart Hampshire, "A New Philosophy of the Just Society," New York Review of Books, February 24, 1972.
Excerpt: I think that this book is the most substantial and interesting contribution to moral philosophy since the war, at least if one thinks only of works written in English. It is a very… More

The Original Position

– Ronald Dworkin, “The Original Position,” University of Chicago Law Review 40 (Spring 1973).

Rawls on Justice

– Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review 87 (April 1973).

Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion

– John Rawls, "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion," American Economic Review 64 (1974): 141–6.
Excerpt: “Recently the maximin criterion of distributive equity has received some attention from economists in connection with the problem of optimal income taxation…What I… More

Distributive Justice

– Robert Nozick, “Distributive Justice,” in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

A Kantian Conception of Equality

– John Rawls, "A Kantian Conception of Equality," Cambridge Review (1975): 94–9. Reprinted as “A Well-Ordered Society,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Vol.5, edited by P. Laslett and J. Fishkin (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1979) pp. 6–20.
Excerpt: When fully articulated, any conception of justice expresses a conception of the person, of the relations between persons, and of the general structure and ends of social… More

Rawls on Justice by Victor Gourevitch

– Victor Gourevitch, “Rawls on Justice,” The Review of Metaphysics 28 (1975).
Victor Gourevitch examines Rawls’ concept of justice and compares it to other understandings in the history of political philosophy.

The Basic Structure as Subject

– The first version was published in the American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 159–65 after it was read before the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 1977. A revised and expanded version appears in Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard B. Brandt, pp. 47–71. ed., A. Goldman and J. Kim. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1978.

Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures

– John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515–72.
In these lectures I examine the notion of a constructivist moral conception, or, more exactly, since there are different kinds of constructivism, one Kantian variant of this notion. The… More

Social Unity and Primary Goods

– in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed., Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, pp. 159–85. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy

– Richard Rorty, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in Merrill Peterson and Robert Vaughn, eds., The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Realizing Rawls

– Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
   

Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics

– Chandran Kukathas and Pettit Philip, eds., Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
From the publisher: John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” has been influential in philosophy, political theory, welfare economics and jurisprudence. This book is thought to be… More

Political Liberalism

– John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; Revised 1996, 2005).
Summary from Publisher: This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a… More

Justice Lite

– Robert Bork, “Justice Lite,” First Things 37 (November 1993).

John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice

– Jacques Bidet, John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995).
This book was important in introducing Rawls, a thinker squarely in the Anglo-American tradition, to the Francophone world.

Justice and Justification

– Norman Daniels, Justice and Justification (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
From the publisher: This wide-ranging collection of essays explores the claim that justification in ethics, whether of matters of theory or practice, involves achieving coherence or… More

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

– John Rawls, edited by Barbara Herman, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Summary from Publisher: The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is… More

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

– John Rawls, edited by Erin Kelley, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Summary from Publisher: This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement… More

The Enduring Significance of John Rawls

– Martha Nussbaum,“The Enduring Significance of John Rawls,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2001.
Excerpt: John Rawls is the most distinguished moral and political philosopher of our age. Initially isolated in a world of Anglo-American philosophy preoccupied with questions of logic and… More

Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams

– John Kekes, "Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams," City Journal, Autumn 2001.
Excerpt: The most celebrated public philosophers of our time—our Rousseau and Voltaire, so to speak—are John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Prophets of a non-Marxist socialism, they provide… More

Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

– Samuel Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Summary: John Rawls (1921-2002) was one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers and continues to be among the most widely discussed of contemporary thinkers. His work,… More

Going off the Rawls

– David Gordon, "Going off the Rawls," The American Conservative, July 28, 2008.

Rawls’s A Theory of Justice: An Introduction

– John Mandle, ed., Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
From the publisher: “A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, is widely regarded as the most important twentieth-century work of Anglo-American political philosophy. It transformed the… More

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith

– John Rawls, edited by Thomas Nagel, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Summary from Publisher: A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. At that… More

Professor Ian Shapiro: The Rawlsian Social Contract

– Yale Courses, YouTube, uploaded on April 6, 2011.
Moral Foundations of Politics (PLSC 118) The next and final Enlightenment tradition to be examined in the class is that of John Rawls, who, according to Professor Shapiro, was a hugely… More

Thomas Pogge on John Rawls

– Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, YouTube, uploaded on January 19, 2012.
Thomas Pogge describes what it was like to study under John Rawls.

Essays

Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics

– John Rawls, "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics," Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 177–97.
The question with which we shall be concerned can be stated as follows: Does there exist a reasonable decision procedure which is sufficiently strong, at least in some cases, to determine… More

Justice as Fairness

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness," Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653-662.
The fundamental idea in the concept of justice is that of fairness. It is this aspect of justice for which utilitarianism, in its classical form, is unable to account, but which is… More

Justice as Fairness (Expanded Version)

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness" (Expanded Version), Philosophical Review 67 (1958): 164–94.
It might seem at first sight that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is more fundamental than the other.… More

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… More

Distributive Justice

– The first version of this paper was published in Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series. eds., P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman, pp. 58–82. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1967. This essay and the essay “Distributive Justice: Some Addenda” were combined to form a second “Distributive Justice” in Economic Justice, ed., E. Phelps, pp. 319–62. London: Penguin Books, 1973.

Distributive Justice: Some Addenda

– John Rawls, "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda," Natural Law Forum 13 (1968): 51–71.
On this occasion I wish to elaborate further the conception of distributive justice that I have already sketched elsewhere. This conception derives from the ideal of social justice… More

A Theory of Justice

– John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Revised 1999).
Summary from Publisher: Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of… More

A New Philosophy of the Just Society

– Stuart Hampshire, "A New Philosophy of the Just Society," New York Review of Books, February 24, 1972.
Excerpt: I think that this book is the most substantial and interesting contribution to moral philosophy since the war, at least if one thinks only of works written in English. It is a very… More

The Original Position

– Ronald Dworkin, “The Original Position,” University of Chicago Law Review 40 (Spring 1973).

Rawls on Justice

– Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review 87 (April 1973).

Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion

– John Rawls, "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion," American Economic Review 64 (1974): 141–6.
Excerpt: “Recently the maximin criterion of distributive equity has received some attention from economists in connection with the problem of optimal income taxation…What I… More

Distributive Justice

– Robert Nozick, “Distributive Justice,” in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

A Kantian Conception of Equality

– John Rawls, "A Kantian Conception of Equality," Cambridge Review (1975): 94–9. Reprinted as “A Well-Ordered Society,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Vol.5, edited by P. Laslett and J. Fishkin (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1979) pp. 6–20.
Excerpt: When fully articulated, any conception of justice expresses a conception of the person, of the relations between persons, and of the general structure and ends of social… More

Rawls on Justice by Victor Gourevitch

– Victor Gourevitch, “Rawls on Justice,” The Review of Metaphysics 28 (1975).
Victor Gourevitch examines Rawls’ concept of justice and compares it to other understandings in the history of political philosophy.

The Basic Structure as Subject

– The first version was published in the American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 159–65 after it was read before the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 1977. A revised and expanded version appears in Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard B. Brandt, pp. 47–71. ed., A. Goldman and J. Kim. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1978.

Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures

– John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515–72.
In these lectures I examine the notion of a constructivist moral conception, or, more exactly, since there are different kinds of constructivism, one Kantian variant of this notion. The… More

Social Unity and Primary Goods

– in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed., Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, pp. 159–85. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy

– Richard Rorty, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in Merrill Peterson and Robert Vaughn, eds., The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Realizing Rawls

– Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
   

Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics

– Chandran Kukathas and Pettit Philip, eds., Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
From the publisher: John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” has been influential in philosophy, political theory, welfare economics and jurisprudence. This book is thought to be… More

Political Liberalism

– John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; Revised 1996, 2005).
Summary from Publisher: This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a… More

Justice Lite

– Robert Bork, “Justice Lite,” First Things 37 (November 1993).

John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice

– Jacques Bidet, John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995).
This book was important in introducing Rawls, a thinker squarely in the Anglo-American tradition, to the Francophone world.

Justice and Justification

– Norman Daniels, Justice and Justification (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
From the publisher: This wide-ranging collection of essays explores the claim that justification in ethics, whether of matters of theory or practice, involves achieving coherence or… More

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

– John Rawls, edited by Barbara Herman, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Summary from Publisher: The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is… More

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

– John Rawls, edited by Erin Kelley, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Summary from Publisher: This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement… More

The Enduring Significance of John Rawls

– Martha Nussbaum,“The Enduring Significance of John Rawls,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2001.
Excerpt: John Rawls is the most distinguished moral and political philosopher of our age. Initially isolated in a world of Anglo-American philosophy preoccupied with questions of logic and… More

Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams

– John Kekes, "Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams," City Journal, Autumn 2001.
Excerpt: The most celebrated public philosophers of our time—our Rousseau and Voltaire, so to speak—are John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Prophets of a non-Marxist socialism, they provide… More

Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

– Samuel Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Summary: John Rawls (1921-2002) was one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers and continues to be among the most widely discussed of contemporary thinkers. His work,… More

Going off the Rawls

– David Gordon, "Going off the Rawls," The American Conservative, July 28, 2008.

Rawls’s A Theory of Justice: An Introduction

– John Mandle, ed., Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
From the publisher: “A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, is widely regarded as the most important twentieth-century work of Anglo-American political philosophy. It transformed the… More

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith

– John Rawls, edited by Thomas Nagel, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Summary from Publisher: A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. At that… More

Professor Ian Shapiro: The Rawlsian Social Contract

– Yale Courses, YouTube, uploaded on April 6, 2011.
Moral Foundations of Politics (PLSC 118) The next and final Enlightenment tradition to be examined in the class is that of John Rawls, who, according to Professor Shapiro, was a hugely… More

Thomas Pogge on John Rawls

– Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, YouTube, uploaded on January 19, 2012.
Thomas Pogge describes what it was like to study under John Rawls.

Commentary

Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics

– John Rawls, "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics," Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 177–97.
The question with which we shall be concerned can be stated as follows: Does there exist a reasonable decision procedure which is sufficiently strong, at least in some cases, to determine… More

Justice as Fairness

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness," Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653-662.
The fundamental idea in the concept of justice is that of fairness. It is this aspect of justice for which utilitarianism, in its classical form, is unable to account, but which is… More

Justice as Fairness (Expanded Version)

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness" (Expanded Version), Philosophical Review 67 (1958): 164–94.
It might seem at first sight that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is more fundamental than the other.… More

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… More

Distributive Justice

– The first version of this paper was published in Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series. eds., P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman, pp. 58–82. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1967. This essay and the essay “Distributive Justice: Some Addenda” were combined to form a second “Distributive Justice” in Economic Justice, ed., E. Phelps, pp. 319–62. London: Penguin Books, 1973.

Distributive Justice: Some Addenda

– John Rawls, "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda," Natural Law Forum 13 (1968): 51–71.
On this occasion I wish to elaborate further the conception of distributive justice that I have already sketched elsewhere. This conception derives from the ideal of social justice… More

A Theory of Justice

– John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Revised 1999).
Summary from Publisher: Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of… More

A New Philosophy of the Just Society

– Stuart Hampshire, "A New Philosophy of the Just Society," New York Review of Books, February 24, 1972.
Excerpt: I think that this book is the most substantial and interesting contribution to moral philosophy since the war, at least if one thinks only of works written in English. It is a very… More

The Original Position

– Ronald Dworkin, “The Original Position,” University of Chicago Law Review 40 (Spring 1973).

Rawls on Justice

– Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review 87 (April 1973).

Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion

– John Rawls, "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion," American Economic Review 64 (1974): 141–6.
Excerpt: “Recently the maximin criterion of distributive equity has received some attention from economists in connection with the problem of optimal income taxation…What I… More

Distributive Justice

– Robert Nozick, “Distributive Justice,” in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

A Kantian Conception of Equality

– John Rawls, "A Kantian Conception of Equality," Cambridge Review (1975): 94–9. Reprinted as “A Well-Ordered Society,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Vol.5, edited by P. Laslett and J. Fishkin (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1979) pp. 6–20.
Excerpt: When fully articulated, any conception of justice expresses a conception of the person, of the relations between persons, and of the general structure and ends of social… More

Rawls on Justice by Victor Gourevitch

– Victor Gourevitch, “Rawls on Justice,” The Review of Metaphysics 28 (1975).
Victor Gourevitch examines Rawls’ concept of justice and compares it to other understandings in the history of political philosophy.

The Basic Structure as Subject

– The first version was published in the American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 159–65 after it was read before the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 1977. A revised and expanded version appears in Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard B. Brandt, pp. 47–71. ed., A. Goldman and J. Kim. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1978.

Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures

– John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515–72.
In these lectures I examine the notion of a constructivist moral conception, or, more exactly, since there are different kinds of constructivism, one Kantian variant of this notion. The… More

Social Unity and Primary Goods

– in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed., Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, pp. 159–85. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy

– Richard Rorty, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in Merrill Peterson and Robert Vaughn, eds., The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Realizing Rawls

– Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
   

Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics

– Chandran Kukathas and Pettit Philip, eds., Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
From the publisher: John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” has been influential in philosophy, political theory, welfare economics and jurisprudence. This book is thought to be… More

Political Liberalism

– John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; Revised 1996, 2005).
Summary from Publisher: This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a… More

Justice Lite

– Robert Bork, “Justice Lite,” First Things 37 (November 1993).

John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice

– Jacques Bidet, John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995).
This book was important in introducing Rawls, a thinker squarely in the Anglo-American tradition, to the Francophone world.

Justice and Justification

– Norman Daniels, Justice and Justification (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
From the publisher: This wide-ranging collection of essays explores the claim that justification in ethics, whether of matters of theory or practice, involves achieving coherence or… More

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

– John Rawls, edited by Barbara Herman, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Summary from Publisher: The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is… More

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

– John Rawls, edited by Erin Kelley, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Summary from Publisher: This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement… More

The Enduring Significance of John Rawls

– Martha Nussbaum,“The Enduring Significance of John Rawls,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2001.
Excerpt: John Rawls is the most distinguished moral and political philosopher of our age. Initially isolated in a world of Anglo-American philosophy preoccupied with questions of logic and… More

Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams

– John Kekes, "Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams," City Journal, Autumn 2001.
Excerpt: The most celebrated public philosophers of our time—our Rousseau and Voltaire, so to speak—are John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Prophets of a non-Marxist socialism, they provide… More

Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

– Samuel Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Summary: John Rawls (1921-2002) was one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers and continues to be among the most widely discussed of contemporary thinkers. His work,… More

Going off the Rawls

– David Gordon, "Going off the Rawls," The American Conservative, July 28, 2008.

Rawls’s A Theory of Justice: An Introduction

– John Mandle, ed., Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
From the publisher: “A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, is widely regarded as the most important twentieth-century work of Anglo-American political philosophy. It transformed the… More

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith

– John Rawls, edited by Thomas Nagel, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Summary from Publisher: A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. At that… More

Professor Ian Shapiro: The Rawlsian Social Contract

– Yale Courses, YouTube, uploaded on April 6, 2011.
Moral Foundations of Politics (PLSC 118) The next and final Enlightenment tradition to be examined in the class is that of John Rawls, who, according to Professor Shapiro, was a hugely… More

Thomas Pogge on John Rawls

– Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, YouTube, uploaded on January 19, 2012.
Thomas Pogge describes what it was like to study under John Rawls.

Multimedia

Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics

– John Rawls, "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics," Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 177–97.
The question with which we shall be concerned can be stated as follows: Does there exist a reasonable decision procedure which is sufficiently strong, at least in some cases, to determine… More

Justice as Fairness

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness," Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653-662.
The fundamental idea in the concept of justice is that of fairness. It is this aspect of justice for which utilitarianism, in its classical form, is unable to account, but which is… More

Justice as Fairness (Expanded Version)

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness" (Expanded Version), Philosophical Review 67 (1958): 164–94.
It might seem at first sight that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is more fundamental than the other.… More

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… More

Distributive Justice

– The first version of this paper was published in Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series. eds., P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman, pp. 58–82. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1967. This essay and the essay “Distributive Justice: Some Addenda” were combined to form a second “Distributive Justice” in Economic Justice, ed., E. Phelps, pp. 319–62. London: Penguin Books, 1973.

Distributive Justice: Some Addenda

– John Rawls, "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda," Natural Law Forum 13 (1968): 51–71.
On this occasion I wish to elaborate further the conception of distributive justice that I have already sketched elsewhere. This conception derives from the ideal of social justice… More

A Theory of Justice

– John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Revised 1999).
Summary from Publisher: Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of… More

A New Philosophy of the Just Society

– Stuart Hampshire, "A New Philosophy of the Just Society," New York Review of Books, February 24, 1972.
Excerpt: I think that this book is the most substantial and interesting contribution to moral philosophy since the war, at least if one thinks only of works written in English. It is a very… More

The Original Position

– Ronald Dworkin, “The Original Position,” University of Chicago Law Review 40 (Spring 1973).

Rawls on Justice

– Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review 87 (April 1973).

Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion

– John Rawls, "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion," American Economic Review 64 (1974): 141–6.
Excerpt: “Recently the maximin criterion of distributive equity has received some attention from economists in connection with the problem of optimal income taxation…What I… More

Distributive Justice

– Robert Nozick, “Distributive Justice,” in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

A Kantian Conception of Equality

– John Rawls, "A Kantian Conception of Equality," Cambridge Review (1975): 94–9. Reprinted as “A Well-Ordered Society,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Vol.5, edited by P. Laslett and J. Fishkin (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1979) pp. 6–20.
Excerpt: When fully articulated, any conception of justice expresses a conception of the person, of the relations between persons, and of the general structure and ends of social… More

Rawls on Justice by Victor Gourevitch

– Victor Gourevitch, “Rawls on Justice,” The Review of Metaphysics 28 (1975).
Victor Gourevitch examines Rawls’ concept of justice and compares it to other understandings in the history of political philosophy.

The Basic Structure as Subject

– The first version was published in the American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 159–65 after it was read before the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 1977. A revised and expanded version appears in Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard B. Brandt, pp. 47–71. ed., A. Goldman and J. Kim. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1978.

Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures

– John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515–72.
In these lectures I examine the notion of a constructivist moral conception, or, more exactly, since there are different kinds of constructivism, one Kantian variant of this notion. The… More

Social Unity and Primary Goods

– in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed., Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, pp. 159–85. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy

– Richard Rorty, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in Merrill Peterson and Robert Vaughn, eds., The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Realizing Rawls

– Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
   

Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics

– Chandran Kukathas and Pettit Philip, eds., Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
From the publisher: John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” has been influential in philosophy, political theory, welfare economics and jurisprudence. This book is thought to be… More

Political Liberalism

– John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; Revised 1996, 2005).
Summary from Publisher: This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a… More

Justice Lite

– Robert Bork, “Justice Lite,” First Things 37 (November 1993).

John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice

– Jacques Bidet, John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995).
This book was important in introducing Rawls, a thinker squarely in the Anglo-American tradition, to the Francophone world.

Justice and Justification

– Norman Daniels, Justice and Justification (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
From the publisher: This wide-ranging collection of essays explores the claim that justification in ethics, whether of matters of theory or practice, involves achieving coherence or… More

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

– John Rawls, edited by Barbara Herman, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Summary from Publisher: The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is… More

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

– John Rawls, edited by Erin Kelley, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Summary from Publisher: This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement… More

The Enduring Significance of John Rawls

– Martha Nussbaum,“The Enduring Significance of John Rawls,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2001.
Excerpt: John Rawls is the most distinguished moral and political philosopher of our age. Initially isolated in a world of Anglo-American philosophy preoccupied with questions of logic and… More

Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams

– John Kekes, "Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams," City Journal, Autumn 2001.
Excerpt: The most celebrated public philosophers of our time—our Rousseau and Voltaire, so to speak—are John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Prophets of a non-Marxist socialism, they provide… More

Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

– Samuel Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Summary: John Rawls (1921-2002) was one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers and continues to be among the most widely discussed of contemporary thinkers. His work,… More

Going off the Rawls

– David Gordon, "Going off the Rawls," The American Conservative, July 28, 2008.

Rawls’s A Theory of Justice: An Introduction

– John Mandle, ed., Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
From the publisher: “A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, is widely regarded as the most important twentieth-century work of Anglo-American political philosophy. It transformed the… More

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith

– John Rawls, edited by Thomas Nagel, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Summary from Publisher: A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. At that… More

Professor Ian Shapiro: The Rawlsian Social Contract

– Yale Courses, YouTube, uploaded on April 6, 2011.
Moral Foundations of Politics (PLSC 118) The next and final Enlightenment tradition to be examined in the class is that of John Rawls, who, according to Professor Shapiro, was a hugely… More

Thomas Pogge on John Rawls

– Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, YouTube, uploaded on January 19, 2012.
Thomas Pogge describes what it was like to study under John Rawls.

Teaching

Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics

– John Rawls, "Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics," Philosophical Review 60 (1951): 177–97.
The question with which we shall be concerned can be stated as follows: Does there exist a reasonable decision procedure which is sufficiently strong, at least in some cases, to determine… More

Justice as Fairness

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness," Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653-662.
The fundamental idea in the concept of justice is that of fairness. It is this aspect of justice for which utilitarianism, in its classical form, is unable to account, but which is… More

Justice as Fairness (Expanded Version)

– John Rawls, "Justice as Fairness" (Expanded Version), Philosophical Review 67 (1958): 164–94.
It might seem at first sight that the concepts of justice and fairness are the same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is more fundamental than the other.… More

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… More

Distributive Justice

– The first version of this paper was published in Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series. eds., P. Laslett and W.G. Runciman, pp. 58–82. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1967. This essay and the essay “Distributive Justice: Some Addenda” were combined to form a second “Distributive Justice” in Economic Justice, ed., E. Phelps, pp. 319–62. London: Penguin Books, 1973.

Distributive Justice: Some Addenda

– John Rawls, "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda," Natural Law Forum 13 (1968): 51–71.
On this occasion I wish to elaborate further the conception of distributive justice that I have already sketched elsewhere. This conception derives from the ideal of social justice… More

A Theory of Justice

– John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. Revised 1999).
Summary from Publisher: Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of… More

A New Philosophy of the Just Society

– Stuart Hampshire, "A New Philosophy of the Just Society," New York Review of Books, February 24, 1972.
Excerpt: I think that this book is the most substantial and interesting contribution to moral philosophy since the war, at least if one thinks only of works written in English. It is a very… More

The Original Position

– Ronald Dworkin, “The Original Position,” University of Chicago Law Review 40 (Spring 1973).

Rawls on Justice

– Thomas Nagel, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review 87 (April 1973).

Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion

– John Rawls, "Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion," American Economic Review 64 (1974): 141–6.
Excerpt: “Recently the maximin criterion of distributive equity has received some attention from economists in connection with the problem of optimal income taxation…What I… More

Distributive Justice

– Robert Nozick, “Distributive Justice,” in his Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).

A Kantian Conception of Equality

– John Rawls, "A Kantian Conception of Equality," Cambridge Review (1975): 94–9. Reprinted as “A Well-Ordered Society,” in Philosophy, Politics, and Society, Vol.5, edited by P. Laslett and J. Fishkin (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1979) pp. 6–20.
Excerpt: When fully articulated, any conception of justice expresses a conception of the person, of the relations between persons, and of the general structure and ends of social… More

Rawls on Justice by Victor Gourevitch

– Victor Gourevitch, “Rawls on Justice,” The Review of Metaphysics 28 (1975).
Victor Gourevitch examines Rawls’ concept of justice and compares it to other understandings in the history of political philosophy.

The Basic Structure as Subject

– The first version was published in the American Philosophical Quarterly 14 (1977): 159–65 after it was read before the meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, 1977. A revised and expanded version appears in Values and Morals: Essays in Honor of William Frankena, Charles Stevenson, and Richard B. Brandt, pp. 47–71. ed., A. Goldman and J. Kim. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1978.

Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures

– John Rawls, "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures," Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980): 515–72.
In these lectures I examine the notion of a constructivist moral conception, or, more exactly, since there are different kinds of constructivism, one Kantian variant of this notion. The… More

Social Unity and Primary Goods

– in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed., Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams, pp. 159–85. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy

– Richard Rorty, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in Merrill Peterson and Robert Vaughn, eds., The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

Realizing Rawls

– Thomas Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989).
   

Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics

– Chandran Kukathas and Pettit Philip, eds., Rawls: A Theory of Justice and Its Critics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990).
From the publisher: John Rawls’ “A Theory of Justice” has been influential in philosophy, political theory, welfare economics and jurisprudence. This book is thought to be… More

Political Liberalism

– John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; Revised 1996, 2005).
Summary from Publisher: This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in A Theory of Justice but changes its philosophical interpretation in a… More

Justice Lite

– Robert Bork, “Justice Lite,” First Things 37 (November 1993).

John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice

– Jacques Bidet, John Rawls et la Theorie de la Justice (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995).
This book was important in introducing Rawls, a thinker squarely in the Anglo-American tradition, to the Francophone world.

Justice and Justification

– Norman Daniels, Justice and Justification (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
From the publisher: This wide-ranging collection of essays explores the claim that justification in ethics, whether of matters of theory or practice, involves achieving coherence or… More

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy

– John Rawls, edited by Barbara Herman, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
Summary from Publisher: The premier political philosopher of his day, John Rawls, in three decades of teaching at Harvard, has had a profound influence on the way philosophical ethics is… More

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement

– John Rawls, edited by Erin Kelley, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).
Summary from Publisher: This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement… More

The Enduring Significance of John Rawls

– Martha Nussbaum,“The Enduring Significance of John Rawls,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2001.
Excerpt: John Rawls is the most distinguished moral and political philosopher of our age. Initially isolated in a world of Anglo-American philosophy preoccupied with questions of logic and… More

Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams

– John Kekes, "Dangerous Egalitarian Dreams," City Journal, Autumn 2001.
Excerpt: The most celebrated public philosophers of our time—our Rousseau and Voltaire, so to speak—are John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. Prophets of a non-Marxist socialism, they provide… More

Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy

– Samuel Freeman, Justice and the Social Contract: Essays on Rawlsian Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Summary: John Rawls (1921-2002) was one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers and continues to be among the most widely discussed of contemporary thinkers. His work,… More

Going off the Rawls

– David Gordon, "Going off the Rawls," The American Conservative, July 28, 2008.

Rawls’s A Theory of Justice: An Introduction

– John Mandle, ed., Rawls's A Theory of Justice: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
From the publisher: “A Theory of Justice, by John Rawls, is widely regarded as the most important twentieth-century work of Anglo-American political philosophy. It transformed the… More

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith

– John Rawls, edited by Thomas Nagel, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Summary from Publisher: A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith is Rawls’s undergraduate senior thesis, submitted in December 1942, just before he entered the army. At that… More

Professor Ian Shapiro: The Rawlsian Social Contract

– Yale Courses, YouTube, uploaded on April 6, 2011.
Moral Foundations of Politics (PLSC 118) The next and final Enlightenment tradition to be examined in the class is that of John Rawls, who, according to Professor Shapiro, was a hugely… More

Thomas Pogge on John Rawls

– Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, YouTube, uploaded on January 19, 2012.
Thomas Pogge describes what it was like to study under John Rawls.