John Rawls

Author profile

born

February 21, 1921 in Baltimore, The United States

died

November 24, 2002

gender

male

genre

Philosophy, Politics

influences

Locke, Kant, Rosseau, Darwin, Hart, Isiah Berlin

About this author

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John Bordley Rawls was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard. His magnum opus A Theory of Justice (1971) is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy." His work in political philosophy, dubbed Rawlsianism, takes as its starting point the argument that "most reasonable principles of justice are those everyone would accept and agree to from a fair position." Rawls employs a number of thought experiments—including the famous veil of ignorance—to determine what constitutes a fair agreement in which "everyone is impartially situated as equals," in order to determine principles of social justice.

Rawls received both...more

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Books by John Rawls

Average rating: 3.79 · 2,659 ratings · 124 reviews · 15 distinct works

	A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, T.M. Scanlon 3.81 avg rating — 1,960 ratings — published 1971 — 23 editions	My rating:
	Justice as Fairness: A Restatement by John Rawls, Erin Kelly (Editor) 3.84 avg rating — 234 ratings — published 2001 — 11 editions	My rating:
	Political Liberalism: Expanded Edition by John Rawls, Martha C. Nussbaum (Foreword by) 3.62 avg rating — 194 ratings — published 1993 — 13 editions	My rating:
	The Law of Peoples: With "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited" 3.39 avg rating — 149 ratings — published 1999 — 8 editions	My rating:
	Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy by John Rawls, Barbara Herman 4.08 avg rating — 63 ratings — published 2000 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy by John Rawls, Samuel Freeman (Editor) 4.13 avg rating — 39 ratings — 4 editions	My rating:
	Collected Papers by John Rawls, Samuel Freeman (Editor) 4.14 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1999 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Liberty, Equality & Law: Selected Tanner Lectures on Moral Philosophy by John Rawls (editor), Charles Fried 4.20 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1987 — 2 editions	My rating:
	A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin & Faith with On My Religion by John Rawls, Robert Merrihew Adams (Commentary), Thomas Nagel (Editor) 3.67 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2009 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Kōsei To Shiteno Seigi Saisetsu 1.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2004	My rating:

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Quotes by John Rawls

“Thus I assume that to each according to his threat advantage is not a conception of justice.”
― John Rawls, A Theory of Justice

tags: ethics , justice , philosophy

4 people liked it

“Each person possesses and inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising.”
― John Rawls

4 people liked it

“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.”
― John Rawls, A Theory of Justice

tags: freedom , individuals , justice , liberalism , philosophy , social-institutions , society , theory , truth

2 people liked it

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John Rawls

Author profile

combine editionsBooks by John Rawls

Quotes by John Rawls

combine editions
Books by John Rawls