Philosophy

John Rawls

1921–2002 · American

Political liberalism; social contract theory

John Rawls single-handedly revived Anglo-American political philosophy with A Theory of Justice (1971). He asked what principles free and equal people would choose to govern their society if they had to choose from behind a "veil of ignorance" that hid their own talents, wealth, race and beliefs, and argued that they would pick equal basic liberties plus a rule allowing inequalities only where they benefit the worst off. Reserved, stammering and famously modest, he taught at Harvard for most of his career and generated an entire industry of reply.

How to spot them

▸The original position and the veil of ignorance
▸'Justice as fairness'; the two principles; the difference principle
▸Reflective equilibrium, primary goods, the lexical priority of liberty
▸Later work on overlapping consensus and public reason in a pluralist society
▸Harvard; a bad stammer; Robert Nozick's libertarian reply in 1974

Key works

A 1971 book that revived political philosophy in English by asking what rules people would choose behind a screen concealing their own talents, wealth and beliefs (1971)

A Theory of Justice — the most discussed work of political philosophy of the twentieth century.

A 1993 revision accepting that citizens will disagree permanently and reasonably about the good life, and seeking only an overlapping consensus among their doctrines (1993)

Political Liberalism — the introduction of public reason and the 'fact of reasonable pluralism'.

A 1999 extension of the framework to relations between peoples, setting out when war may be waged and what is owed to burdened societies (1999)

The Law of Peoples.

A 2001 restatement assembled from his lecture notes by a former student, answering thirty years of objections (2001)

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, edited by Erin Kelly.

A 1955 paper distinguishing the justification of a practice from the justification of an act falling under it, an early attempt to spare utilitarianism the charge of punishing the innocent (1955)

'Two Concepts of Rules', Philosophical Review.

A 1995 essay marking the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombings, by a philosopher who had fought as an infantryman in the Pacific, holding that they were not justified (1995)

'Fifty Years after Hiroshima', published in Dissent.

Key ideas

The original position: a thought experiment in which representatives choose principles of justice for a society they must then live in
The veil of ignorance: those choosing do not know their class, race, sex, talents or conception of the good, so they cannot rig the rules in their own favour
The first principle: each person has an equal claim to the most extensive scheme of basic liberties compatible with the same for all — and it has priority over the second
The second principle: offices open under fair equality of opportunity, and inequalities permitted only if they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle)
Reflective equilibrium: adjusting principles and considered judgements against each other until they fit
Overlapping consensus: a stable liberal order is endorsed by many different religious and moral doctrines for their own reasons, not imposed as one more doctrine
Public reason: on constitutional essentials, citizens should argue in terms others can accept without sharing their faith or philosophy

Quick-fire facts

•Born in Baltimore in 1921; two of his brothers died in childhood after catching infections from him, an event he later linked to his stammer
•Served as an infantryman in the Pacific — New Guinea, the Philippines and occupied Japan — and saw the ruins of Hiroshima
•His Princeton undergraduate thesis was a work of theology; he had considered ordination, and lost his orthodox Christian belief during the war
•Taught at Cornell and MIT before moving to Harvard in 1962, where he became James Bryce Conant University Professor
•A Theory of Justice has been translated into more than two dozen languages and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies
•Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) was written largely as a libertarian answer to it
•Awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton in 1999 and the Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy the same year
•He was famously self-effacing, reportedly apologising to students for taking up their time, and refused most public platforms
•Suffered a series of strokes from 1995 and died at home in Lexington, Massachusetts, in November 2002

Drill it — 8 cards

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Sources

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — John Rawls
John Rawls — A Theory of Justice