A Theory Of Justice | Work By Rawls - Encyclopedia Britannica

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democracy

• In democracy: Rawls

  In A Theory of Justice (1971), the American philosopher John Rawls attempted to develop a nonutilitarian justification of a democratic political order characterized by fairness, equality, and individual rights. Reviving the notion of a social contract, which had been dormant since the 18th century, he imagined…

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discussed in biography

• In John Rawls

  liberalism in his major work, A Theory of Justice (1971). He is widely considered the most important political philosopher of the 20th century.

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ethics

• In ethics: Kantian constructivism: a middle ground?

  …of the 20th century was A Theory of Justice (1971), by John Rawls (1921–2002). Although the book was primarily concerned with normative ethics (and so will be discussed in the next section), it made significant contributions to metaethics as well. To argue for his principles of justice, Rawls revived the…

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• In ethics: Rawls’s theory of justice

  …enthusiastic welcome accorded to Rawls’s A Theory of Justice when it appeared in 1971. Rawls offered an alternative to utilitarianism that came close to its rival as a systematic theory of what one ought to do; at the same time, it led to conclusions about justice very different from those…

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political philosophy

• In political philosophy: Rawls

  In A Theory of Justice, Rawls observed that a necessary condition of justice in any society is that each individual should be the equal bearer of certain rights that cannot be disregarded under any circumstances, even if doing so would advance the general welfare or satisfy…

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state of nature

• In state of nature: John Rawls

  philosopher John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice (1971) and other works. Although Rawls rejected the notion of a pre-social or pre-political state of nature, he argued that the basic features of a just society could best be discovered by considering the principles of government that would be accepted…

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