john rawls justice as fairness a restatement

These political disputes, and others like them, do not arise from nothing. (Of course, Rawls would not put it quite like that.) Should society allow abortion? What role, if any, should government play in education? Is it not the case that, in a constitutional democracy like the United States, large numbers of people find themselves at odds on key issues? Some people, for example, support laissez-faire capitalism others foolishly support socialist nostrums. By limiting his theory’s application, Rawls hopes to strengthen support for it and his new starting point, one must admit, is plausible.

Beginning with Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls began to claim that his theory was devised to fit a special set of circumstances, and he continues this emphasis in the book we have now to consider. In one respect, though, he has changed course. Rawls has met these objections, for the most part, by constant reiteration of his original contentions. But Antony Flew, Robert Nozick, and other critics have devastated Rawls’s Das Kapital of the welfare state, in particular his famous difference principle.

True enough, his A Theory of Justice has been the most widely acclaimed book in political philosophy since its publication thirty years ago. Time has not been altogether kind to John Rawls. Harvard University Press, 2001, xviii + 214 pgs.

John rawls justice as fairness a restatement