![]() ![]() The second is that of society as a fair system of cooperation among free and equal citizens, an idea that is developed to arrive at a “political” conception of justice, which applies only to the broadest social framework of the nation and the way that persons relate to one another politically within that basic structure. The first is that of citizens as free and equal persons, who have a capacity to understand and act on principles regulating a scheme of social cooperation and a capacity to develop, revise, and pursue rationally a conception of the good. Rawls begins with conceptions he considers implicit in our political culture. Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971) resurrected social contract theory and gave it a more egalitarian form, drawing on Kant to provide a stronger foundation for liberal rights than the previously dominant form of liberal thought-utilitarianism-seemed able to. ![]() ![]() His influence extends far beyond philosophy into law and politics. The best known version of liberalism today-indeed, the version that is often equated with liberalism simply-is John Rawls’s antiperfectionist liberalism, developed in A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1992). JOHN RAWLS, CONTEMPORARY LIBERALISM, and NATURAL LAW ![]()
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