John (Bordley) Rawls - Biographical sketch, Rawls's contribution to political and moral philosophy, A Theory of Justice

Philosopher, born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He studied at Princeton, and taught at Princeton and Cornell before going to Harvard as professor in 1962. His best-known work, A Theory of Justice (1971), has probably been the most discussed text in social and political philosophy since World War 2, reviving an interest in social contract theory, rights, and liberalism.

Western Philosophers 20th-century philosophy
John Rawls in 1990 (photo by Jane Reed)
Name:	John Rawls
Birth:	February 21, 1921
Death:	November 24, 2002
School/tradition:	Analytic
Main interests:	Political philosophy, Liberalism, Justice, Politics
Notable ideas:	Justice as Fairness, The original position, Reflective equilibrium, Overlapping consensus, Public reason. Hart
Influenced:	Thomas Nagel, Thomas Pogge, Thomas Scanlon, Christine Korsgaard

John Rawls (February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, and The Law of Peoples. He was an important political philosopher of the 20th century in the English-speaking world.

Biographical sketch

John Borden (Bordley) Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 21, 1921. He was the second of five sons to William Lee Rawls and Anna Abell Stump. Rawls attended school in Baltimore only for a short time before transferring to Kent School, an Episcopalian preparatory school in Connecticut. Upon graduation in 1939, Rawls went on to Princeton University, where he became interested in philosophy, and was elected to join the membership of The Ivy Club. During this time (World War II), Rawls served as an infantryman in the Pacific where he toured New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan and witnessed the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. After this experience, Rawls turned down the offer of becoming an officer and left the army as a private in 1946. Rawls then married Margaret Fox, a Brown graduate, in 1949. Margaret and John had a shared interest in indexing - they spent their first holiday together writing the index for a book on Nietzsche, and Rawls wrote the index for A Theory of Justice himself. from Princeton in 1950, Rawls decided to teach there until 1952 when he received a Fulbright Fellowship to Oxford University (Christ Church), where he was influenced by the liberal political theorist and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin and, more strongly, the legal theorist H.L.A. Rawls suffered the first of several strokes in 1995, which severely impeded his ability to continue working. Nonetheless, he was still able to complete a work entitled The Law of Peoples, which contains the most complete statement of his views on international justice, before dying in November 2002. His nephew, William Lee Rawls, was former Chief of Staff to Senate Majority Leader William H.

Rawls's contribution to political and moral philosophy

Rawls is noted for his contributions to liberal political philosophy. Among the ideas from Rawls's work that have received wide attention are:

Justice as Fairness which consists of the liberty principle and the difference principle.

Many academic philosophers believe that Rawls made an important and lasting contribution to political philosophy. There is general agreement that the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971 led to a revival in the academic study of political philosophy. Rawls's work has crossed disciplinary lines, receiving serious attention from economists, legal scholars, political scientists, sociologists, and theologians. Rawls has the unique distinction among contemporary political philosophers of being frequently cited by the courts of law in the United States and referred to by practicing politicians in the United Kingdom.

A Theory of Justice

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls attempts to solve the intractable problem of distributive justice by utilizing a version of the familiar device of the social contract. The resultant theory is known as "Justice as Fairness", from which Rawls derives his two famous principles of justice: the liberty principle and the difference principle.

Political Liberalism

Rawls's later work focused on the question of stability: could a society ordered by the two principles of justice endure? In Political Liberalism, Rawls introduced the idea of an overlapping consensus—or agreement on justice as fairness between citizens who hold different religious and philosophical views (or conceptions of the good).

In Political Liberalism Rawls addressed the most common criticism levelled at Theory—the criticism that the principles of justice were simply an alternative systematic conception of justice that was superior to utilitarianism or any other comprehensive theory. This meant that justice as fairness turned out to be simply another reasonable comprehensive doctrine that was incompatible with other reasonable doctrines. It failed to distinguish between a comprehensive moral theory which addressed the problem of justice and that of a political conception of justice that was independent of any comprehensive theory.

The political conception of justice that Rawls introduces in Political Liberalism is the view of justice that people with conflicting, but reasonable views, would agree on to regulate the basic structure of society (note the new limits on the scope of justice as fairness). As such the political conception of justice would be the overlapping consensus about justice.

Rawls also modified the principles of justice to become the following (with the first having priority over the second):

Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value. The first principle now reads 'equal claim' instead of 'equal right', and he also replaces the phrase 'system of basic liberties' with 'a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties.'

The Law of Peoples

Although there were passing comments on international affairs in A Theory of Justice, it wasn't until late in his career that Rawls formulated a comprehensive theory of international politics with the publication of The Law of Peoples. The tolerance of the latter by the former was needed to ensure that a liberal foreign policy was not "unreasonable" to the rest of the world.

Charles Beitz had previously written a study that applied Rawls's second principle of justice to international relations. Rawls, to the amazement of many, refuted this application and claimed that nations were self-sufficient, unlike the cooperative enterprises that domestic societies are. Although Rawls recognised that aid should be given to governments who must suspend human rights in times of great trouble, he claimed that there must be a cut-off point for such aid. These arguments seemed to parallel those offered by Nozick against domestic welfare and were widely considered to be inconsistent with Rawls's domestic theory. Rawls claimed that natural resources do not determine a country's wealth, but that it is determined by human capital and the political culture of a country. This may seem reminiscent of neo-conservativism, but Rawls was optimistic in believing that non-liberal nations would eventually see the benefits of liberalism for themselves and come to respect human rights.

Publications

Bibliography

A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971. The revised edition of 1999 incorporates changes that Rawls made for translated editions of A Theory of Justice. Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation TJ to refer to this work. The John Dewey Essays in Philosophy, 4. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. The paperback adds a valuable new introduction and an essay titled "Reply to Habermas.” The Law of Peoples: with "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. Collected Papers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. However, one important unpublished work, Rawls's dissertation, is not included. Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2000. This shorter summary of the main arguments of Rawls's political philosophy was edited by Erin Kelly. Many versions of this were circulated in typescript and much of the material was delivered by Rawls in lectures when he taught courses covering his own work at Harvard University. Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, forthcomming (2006 or 2007). "Justice as Fairness.” Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653-662. "Justice as Fairness.” Philosophical Review (April 1958), 67 (2): 164-194. "Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice" Nomos VI (1963) (Hayek refers to this article to show that Rawls agrees with his opinion) "Distributive Justice: Some Addenda.” Natural Law Forum (1968), 13: 51-71. "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical.” Philosophy & "The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus.” New York University Law Review (May 1989), 64 (2): 233-255. Yearbook of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Proceedings of the 6th Annual New York University Institute of Philosophy. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics, and Society. Third Series, pp. "Justice as Reciprocity.” In Samuel Gorovitz, ed., Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill: With Critical Essays, pp. "Author's Note.” In Thomas Schwartz, ed., Freedom and Authority: An Introduction to Social and Political Philosophy, p. Phelps, ed., Economic Justice: Selected Readings, pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Selected secondary literature

Norman Daniels ed., Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of A Theory of Justice. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Philip Pettit, Rawls: A Theory of Justice and its Critics. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. This is a short study of Rawls's work and critical reactions. Samuel Freeman ed., Cambridge Companion to Rawls. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.