Philosophy
1921 to 2002, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Justice as fairness, the veil of ignorance, and public reason - how free and equal people could agree on fair terms for a divided society.
Start learning John →Rawls’s founding move - to picture the principles of a just society as those that free and equal people would agree on in an ‘original position,’ behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ that hides the…
What the parties choose behind the veil: first, an equal scheme of basic liberties for all; then, fair equality of opportunity and the ‘difference principle’ - the rule that social and economic inequalities…
Rawls’s deepest objection to the theory he set out to replace: utilitarianism, by summing satisfactions across a whole society, treats many distinct people as if they were one, and so ‘does not take seriousl…
Rawls’s method for doing moral philosophy: instead of deducing justice from self-evident first principles, we work back and forth between our considered moral judgments and the principles meant to explain them, ad…
Rawls’s later question: how can a just and stable society endure among citizens permanently divided by religion and philosophy? His answer - a political conception of justice that each can affirm from within their…
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