John Rawls

John Bordley Rawls (/rɔːlz/;[3] February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an
American moral and political philosopher in the liberal tradition.[4][5] Rawls received both
the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999,
the latter presented by President Bill Clinton, in recognition of how Rawls's work "revived
the disciplines of political and ethical philosophy with his argument that a society in
which the most fortunate help the least fortunate is not only a moral society but a logical
one".[6]

In 1990, Will Kymlicka wrote in his

introduction to the field that "it is
John Rawls
generally accepted that the recent
rebirth of normative political
philosophy began with the publication
of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in
1971".[7][8] Rawls has often been
described as one of the most influential
political philosophers of the 20th
century.[9] He has the unusual
distinction among contemporary
political philosophers of being
frequently cited by the courts of law in
the United States and Canada[10] and
referred to by practising politicians in Rawls in 1971
the United States and the United
Born John Bordley Rawls
Kingdom.[11] In a 2008 national survey
February 21, 1921
of political theorists, based on 1,086 Baltimore, Maryland,
responses from professors at U.S.
accredited, four-year colleges and
Died November 24, 2002
universities in the United States, Rawls
(aged 81)
was voted first on the list of "Scholars
:
 Who Have Had the Greatest Impact on Lexington,

Political Theory in the Past 20 Massachusetts, U.S.

Years".[12]
Spouse(s) Margaret Warfield
Fox
Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness"
recommends equal basic liberties,
Philosophy career
equality of opportunity, and facilitating
the maximum benefit to the least Education Princeton University
advantaged members of society in any (BA, PhD)
case where inequalities may occur.
Awards Rolf Schock Prizes in
Rawls's argument for these principles
Logic and
of social justice uses a thought Philosophy (1999)
experiment called the "original
position", in which people deliberately
Era 20th-century
select what kind of society they would philosophy •
choose to live in if they did not know
21st-century
which social position they would
philosophy
personally occupy. In his later work
Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls Region Western philosophy

turned to the question of how political School Analytic •

power could be made legitimate given
Social liberalism
reasonable disagreement about the
nature of the good life. Institutions As faculty member:
Cornell •

Biography Harvard • MIT •

Princeton

Early life As fellow: Christ

… Church, Oxford
Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
Thesis A Study in the
He was the second of five sons born to
Grounds of Ethical
William Lee Rawls, a prominent Knowledge:
Baltimore attorney, and Anna Abell Considered with
:
 Stump Rawls.[13][14] Tragedy struck Reference to

Rawls at a young age: Judgments on the

Moral Worth of
Character (https://ca
Two of his brothers died in
talog.princeton.edu/
childhood because they had catalog/1421459) (
contracted fatal illnesses from 1950)

him. ... In 1928, the seven-

Doctoral students Thomas Pogge,
year-old Rawls contracted Thomas Nagel,
diphtheria. His brother Bobby, Allan Gibbard,

younger by 20 months, visited Kwame Anthony

Appiah, Arnold
him in his room and was fatally
Davidson, Onora
infected. The next winter, O'Neill, Adrian
Rawls contracted pneumonia. Piper, Elizabeth S.
Anderson, Christine
Another younger brother,
Korsgaard, Susan
Tommy, caught the illness
Neiman, Sissela
[15]
from him and died. Bok, Hilary Bok,
Claudia Card, David
Rawls's biographer Thomas Pogge Lyons, Hannah
calls the loss of the brothers the "most Ginsborg, Michele
important events in John's Moody-Adams, T.
childhood."[16] M. Scanlon, Nancy
Sherman, Barbara
Herman, Joshua
Cohen, Jean
Elizabeth Hampton,
Michael Stocker,
Thomas E. Hill Jr.,
Henry S.
Richardson,
Gurcharan Das,
Andreas Teuber,
Samuel Freeman

Main interests Political

:
 Main interests Political
philosophy •

Politics •

Social contract
theory •

Democracy •

Political
Legitimacy •

Instrumental and
value rationality

Notable ideas Justice as

fairness •

Original position •

Reflective
equilibrium •

Overlapping
consensus •

Property-owning
democracy •

Public reason •

Liberal
neutrality[1] •

Veil of ignorance •

Deliberative
democracy •

Liberal socialism •

Primary goods •
:
 Telishment •

Dismissal of the
Concept of
Desert[2]
Influences
Hobbes • Aristotle • Locke •

Constant • Rousseau • Kant •

Marx • Pareto • Thoreau • Dewey •

Freud • Nietzsche • Darwin •

King Jr. • Mill • Sidgwick • Hart •

Berlin • Shklar • Dreben • Meade •

Malcolm • Wittgenstein • Weber

Influenced
Anderson • Appiah • Habermas •

Harsanyi • Honneth • Dworkin •

Estlund • Nagel • Nozick •

Nussbaum • Pogge • Beitz •

Barry • Benhabib • Brooks •

Scanlon • Cohen • G.A. Cohen •

Sandel • Shelby • Sen • Stern •

Scarry • Card • Cavell • Davidson •

Korsgaard • Binmore • Foisneau •

Freeman • Forst • Fleurbaey •

Fraser • Guttmann • O'Neill •

Otsuka • Neiman • Van Parijs •

Kymlicka • Nino • Krugman • Okin •

Phelps • Rorty • Raz • Ricoeur •

:
 Shapiro • Taylor • Walzer • Wolff •

Wolin • West • Young •

September Group

Signature

Rawls as a Kent School

senior, 1937

Rawls graduated from the Calvert School in Baltimore before enrolling in the Kent
School, an Episcopalian preparatory school in Connecticut. Upon graduation in 1939,
Rawls attended Princeton University, where he was accepted into The Ivy Club and the
American Whig-Cliosophic Society.[17] At Princeton, Rawls was influenced by Norman
Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein's student.[18] During his last two years at Princeton, he
"became deeply concerned with theology and its doctrines." He considered attending a
seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood[19] and wrote an "intensely religious
senior thesis (BI)."[18] In his 181-page long thesis titled "Meaning of Sin and Faith," Rawls
attacked Pelagianism because it "would render the Cross of Christ to no effect."[20] His
argument was partly drawn from Karl Marx's book On the Jewish Question, which
criticized the idea that natural inequality in ability could be a just determiner of the
:
 distribution of wealth in society. Even after Rawls became an atheist, many of the anti-
Pelagian arguments he used were repeated in A Theory of Justice.[21] Rawls graduated
from Princeton in 1943 with a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude.[14]

Military service, 1943–46 …

Rawls enlisted in the U.S. Army in February 1943.[22] During World War II, Rawls served
as an infantryman in the Pacific, where he served a tour of duty in New Guinea and was
awarded a Bronze Star;[23] and the Philippines, where he endured intensive trench
warfare and witnessed traumatizing scenes of violence and bloodshed.[24][25] It was
there that he lost his Christian faith and became an atheist.[18][26][27]

Following the surrender of Japan, Rawls became part of General MacArthur's occupying
army[14] and was promoted to sergeant.[28] But he became disillusioned with the military
when he saw the aftermath of the atomic blast in Hiroshima.[29] Rawls then disobeyed an
order to discipline a fellow soldier, "believing no punishment was justified," and was
"demoted back to a private."[28] Disenchanted, he left the military in January 1946.[30]

Academic career …

In early 1946,[31] Rawls returned to Princeton to pursue a doctorate in moral philosophy.

He married Margaret Warfield Fox, a Brown University graduate, in 1949. They had four
children, Anne Warfield, Robert Lee, Alexander Emory, and Elizabeth Fox.[14]

Rawls received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1950 after completing a doctoral dissertation
titled A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to
Judgments on the Moral Worth of Character. Rawls taught 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 Isaiah Berlin and the legal theorist
H. L. A. Hart. After returning to the United States he served first as an assistant and then
associate professor at Cornell University. In 1962, he became a full professor of
philosophy at Cornell, and soon achieved a tenured position at MIT. That same year, he
moved to Harvard University, where he taught for almost forty years and where he
:
 trained some of the leading contemporary figures in moral and political philosophy,
including Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, Thomas Nagel, Allan Gibbard, Onora O'Neill, Adrian
Piper, Arnold Davidson, Elizabeth S. Anderson, Christine Korsgaard, Susan Neiman,
Claudia Card, Rainer Forst, Thomas Pogge, T. M. Scanlon, Barbara Herman, Joshua
Cohen, Thomas E. Hill Jr., Gurcharan Das, Andreas Teuber, Samuel Freeman and Paul
Weithman. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard.

Later life …

Rawls rarely gave interviews and, having both a stutter (partially caused by the deaths of
two of his brothers, who died through infections contracted from Rawls)[32] and a "bat-
like horror of the limelight,"[33] did not become a public intellectual despite his fame. He
instead remained committed mainly to his academic and family life.[33]

In 1995, he suffered the first of several strokes, severely impeding his ability to continue
to work. He was nevertheless able to complete The Law of Peoples, the most complete
statement of his views on international justice, and published in 2001 shortly before his
death Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, a response to criticisms of A Theory of
Justice. Rawls died on November 24, 2002, at age 81, and was buried at the Mount
Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife, Mard Rawls,[34] and
their four children, and four grandchildren.[35]

Philosophical thought

Rawls published three main books. The first, A Theory of Justice, focused on distributive
justice and attempted to reconcile the competing claims of the values of freedom and
equality. The second, Political Liberalism, addressed the question of how citizens divided
by intractable religious and philosophical disagreements could come to endorse a
constitutional democratic regime. The third, The Law of Peoples, focused on the issue of
global justice.
:
 A Theory of Justice …

A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, aimed to resolve the seemingly competing claims
of freedom and equality. The shape Rawls's resolution took, however, was not that of a
balancing act that compromised or weakened the moral claim of one value compared
with the other. Rather, his intent was to show that notions of freedom and equality could
be integrated into a seamless unity he called justice as fairness. By attempting to
enhance the perspective which his readers should take when thinking about justice,
Rawls hoped to show the supposed conflict between freedom and equality to be illusory.

Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) includes a thought experiment he called the "original
position." The intuition motivating its employment is this: the enterprise of political
philosophy will be greatly benefited by a specification of the correct standpoint a person
should take in his or her thinking about justice. When we think about what it would mean
for a just state of affairs to obtain between persons, we eliminate certain features (such
as hair or eye color, height, race, etc.) and fixate upon others. Rawls's original position is
meant to encode all of our intuitions about which features are relevant, and which
irrelevant, for the purposes of deliberating well about justice.

The original position is Rawls's hypothetical scenario in which a group of persons is set
the task of reaching an agreement about the kind of political and economic structure
they want for a society, which they will then occupy. Each individual, however,
deliberates behind a "veil of ignorance": each lacks knowledge, for example, of his or her
gender, race, age, intelligence, wealth, skills, education and religion. The only thing that
a given member knows about themselves is that they are in possession of the basic
capacities necessary to fully and wilfully participate in an enduring system of mutual
cooperation; each knows they can be a member of the society.
:
 A Theory of Justice, Visual illustration of the "original position"
1st ed. and "veil of ignorance"

Citizens making choices about their society are asked to

make them from an "original position" of equality (at left)
behind a "veil of ignorance" (wall, center), without knowing
what gender, race, abilities, tastes, wealth, or position in
society they will have (at right). Rawls claims this will cause
them to choose "fair" policies.

Rawls posits two basic capacities that the individuals would know themselves to
possess. First, individuals know that they have the capacity to form, pursue and revise a
conception of the good, or life plan. Exactly what sort of conception of the good this is,
however, the individual does not yet know. It may be, for example, religious or secular,
but at the start, the individual in the original position does not know which. Second, each
individual understands him or herself to have the capacity to develop a sense of justice
and a generally effective desire to abide by it. Knowing only these two features of
themselves, the group will deliberate in order to design a social structure, during which
each person will seek his or her maximal advantage. The idea is that proposals that we
would ordinarily think of as unjust—such as that black people or women should not be
allowed to hold public office—will not be proposed, in this, Rawls's original position,
because it would be irrational to propose them. The reason is simple: one does not know
whether he himself would be a woman or a black person. This position is expressed in
the difference principle, according to which, in a system of ignorance about one's status,
one would strive to improve the position of the worst off, because he might find himself
in that position.

Rawls develops his original position by modelling it, in certain respects at least, after the
:
 "initial situations" of various social contract thinkers who came before him, including
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Each social contractarian
constructs his/her initial situation somewhat differently, having in mind a unique political
morality s/he intends the thought experiment to generate.[36] Iain King has suggested
the original position draws on Rawls's experiences in post-war Japan, where the US
Army was challenged with designing new social and political authorities for the country,
while "imagining away all that had gone before."[37]

In social justice processes, each person early on makes decisions about which features
of persons to consider and which to ignore. Rawls's aspiration is to have created a
thought experiment whereby a version of that process is carried to its completion,
illuminating the correct standpoint a person should take in his or her thinking about
justice. If he has succeeded, then the original position thought experiment may function
as a full specification of the moral standpoint we should attempt to achieve when
deliberating about social justice.

In setting out his theory, Rawls described his method as one of "reflective equilibrium," a
concept which has since been used in other areas of philosophy. Reflective equilibrium is
achieved by mutually adjusting one's general principles and one's considered
judgements on particular cases, to bring the two into line with one another.

Principles of justice
…
Rawls derives two principles of justice from the original position. The first of these is the
Liberty Principle, which establishes equal basic liberties for all citizens. 'Basic' liberty
entails the (familiar in the liberal tradition) freedoms of conscience, association and
expression as well as democratic rights; Rawls also includes a personal property right,
but this is defended in terms of moral capacities and self-respect,[38] rather than an
appeal to a natural right of self-ownership (this distinguishes Rawls's account from the
classical liberalism of John Locke and the libertarianism of Robert Nozick).

Rawls argues that a second principle of equality would be agreed upon to guarantee
liberties that represent meaningful options for all in society and ensure distributive
justice. For example, formal guarantees of political voice and freedom of assembly are of
:
 little real worth to the desperately poor and marginalized in society. Demanding that
everyone have exactly the same effective opportunities in life would almost certainly
offend the very liberties that are supposedly being equalized. Nonetheless, we would
want to ensure at least the "fair worth" of our liberties: wherever one ends up in society,
one wants life to be worth living, with enough effective freedom to pursue personal
goals. Thus participants would be moved to affirm a two-part second principle
comprising Fair Equality of Opportunity and the famous (and controversial[39]) difference
principle. This second principle ensures that those with comparable talents and
motivation face roughly similar life chances and that inequalities in society work to the
benefit of the least advantaged.

Rawls held that these principles of justice apply to the "basic structure" of fundamental
social institutions (such as the judiciary, the economic structure and the political
constitution), a qualification that has been the source of some controversy and
constructive debate (see the work of Gerald Cohen). Rawls's theory of justice stakes out
the task of equalizing the distribution of primary social goods to those least advantaged
in society and thus may be seen as a largely political answer to the question of justice,
with matters of morality somewhat conflated into a political account of justice and just
institutions. Relational approaches to the question of justice, by contrast, seek to
examine the connections between individuals and focuses on their relations in societies,
with respect to how these relationships are established and configured.[40]

Rawls further argued that these principles were to be 'lexically ordered' to award priority
to basic liberties over the more equality-oriented demands of the second principle. This
has also been a topic of much debate among moral and political philosophers.

Finally, Rawls took his approach as applying in the first instance to what he called a
"well-ordered society ... designed to advance the good of its members and effectively
regulated by a public conception of justice."[41] In this respect, he understood justice as
fairness as a contribution to "ideal theory," the determination of "principles that
characterize a well-ordered society under favorable circumstances."[42] Much recent
work in political philosophy has asked what justice as fairness might dictate (or indeed,
whether it is very useful at all) for problems of "partial compliance" under "nonideal
:
 theory."

Political Liberalism …

First edition of Political

Liberalism

In Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls turned towards the question of political legitimacy in
the context of intractable philosophical, religious, and moral disagreement amongst
citizens regarding the human good. Such disagreement, he insisted, was reasonable—
the result of the free exercise of human rationality under the conditions of open enquiry
and free conscience that the liberal state is designed to safeguard. The question of
legitimacy in the face of reasonable disagreement was urgent for Rawls because his own
justification of Justice as Fairness relied upon a Kantian conception of the human good
that can be reasonably rejected. If the political conception offered in A Theory of Justice
can only be shown to be good by invoking a controversial conception of human
flourishing, it is unclear how a liberal state ordered according to it could possibly be
legitimate.

The intuition animating this seemingly new concern is actually no different from the
guiding idea of A Theory of Justice, namely that the fundamental charter of a society
must rely only on principles, arguments and reasons that cannot be reasonably rejected
by the citizens whose lives will be limited by its social, legal, and political
:
 circumscriptions. In other words, the legitimacy of a law is contingent upon its
justification being impossible to reasonably reject. This old insight took on a new shape,
however, when Rawls realized that its application must extend to the deep justification of
Justice as Fairness itself, which he had presented in terms of a reasonably rejectable
(Kantian) conception of human flourishing as the free development of autonomous moral
agency.

The core of Political Liberalism, accordingly, is its insistence that, in order to retain its
legitimacy, the liberal state must commit itself to the "ideal of public reason." This
roughly means that citizens in their public capacity must engage one another only in
terms of reasons whose status as reasons is shared between them. Political reasoning,
then, is to proceed purely in terms of "public reasons." For example: a Supreme Court
justice deliberating on whether or not the denial to homosexuals of the ability to marry
constitutes a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause may not advert
to his religious convictions on the matter, but he may take into account the argument
that a same-sex household provides sub-optimal conditions for a child's development.
This is because reasons based upon the interpretation of sacred text are non-public
(their force as reasons relies upon faith commitments that can be reasonably rejected),
whereas reasons that rely upon the value of providing children with environments in
which they may develop optimally are public reasons—their status as reasons draws
upon no deep, controversial conception of human flourishing.

Rawls held that the duty of civility—the duty of citizens to offer one another reasons that
are mutually understood as reasons—applies within what he called the "public political
forum." This forum extends from the upper reaches of government—for example the
supreme legislative and judicial bodies of the society—all the way down to the
deliberations of a citizen deciding for whom to vote in state legislatures or how to vote in
public referenda. Campaigning politicians should also, he believed, refrain from
pandering to the non-public religious or moral convictions of their constituencies.

The ideal of public reason secures the dominance of the public political values—
freedom, equality, and fairness—that serve as the foundation of the liberal state. But
what about the justification of these values? Since any such justification would
:
 necessarily draw upon deep (religious or moral) metaphysical commitments which would
be reasonably rejectable, Rawls held that the public political values may only be justified
privately by individual citizens. The public liberal political conception and its attendant
values may and will be affirmed publicly (in judicial opinions and presidential addresses,
for example) but its deep justifications will not. The task of justification falls to what
Rawls called the "reasonable comprehensive doctrines" and the citizens who subscribe
to them. A reasonable Catholic will justify the liberal values one way, a reasonable
Muslim another, and a reasonable secular citizen yet another way. One may illustrate
Rawls's idea using a Venn diagram: the public political values will be the shared space
upon which overlap numerous reasonable comprehensive doctrines. Rawls's account of
stability presented in A Theory of Justice is a detailed portrait of the compatibility of one
—Kantian—comprehensive doctrine with justice as fairness. His hope is that similar
accounts may be presented for many other comprehensive doctrines. This is Rawls's
famous notion of an "overlapping consensus."

Such a consensus would necessarily exclude some doctrines, namely, those that are
"unreasonable," and so one may wonder what Rawls has to say about such doctrines. An
unreasonable comprehensive doctrine is unreasonable in the sense that it is
incompatible with the duty of civility. This is simply another way of saying that an
unreasonable doctrine is incompatible with the fundamental political values a liberal
theory of justice is designed to safeguard—freedom, equality and fairness. So one
answer to the question of what Rawls has to say about such doctrines is—nothing. For
one thing, the liberal state cannot justify itself to individuals (such as religious
fundamentalists) who hold to such doctrines, because any such justification would—as
has been noted—proceed in terms of controversial moral or religious commitments that
are excluded from the public political forum. But, more importantly, the goal of the
Rawlsian project is primarily to determine whether or not the liberal conception of
political legitimacy is internally coherent, and this project is carried out by the
specification of what sorts of reasons persons committed to liberal values are permitted
to use in their dialogue, deliberations and arguments with one another about political
matters. The Rawlsian project has this goal to the exclusion of concern with justifying
liberal values to those not already committed—or at least open—to them. Rawls's
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 concern is with whether or not the idea of political legitimacy fleshed out in terms of the
duty of civility and mutual justification can serve as a viable form of public discourse in
the face of the religious and moral pluralism of modern democratic society, not with
justifying this conception of political legitimacy in the first place.

Rawls also modified the principles of justice as follows (with the first principle having
priority over the second, and the first half of the second having priority over the latter
half):

1. 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.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be
attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of
opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged members of society.

These principles are subtly modified from the principles in Theory. 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 two parts of the second principle are also switched, so that the difference
principle becomes the latter of the three.

The Law of Peoples …

Although there were passing comments on international affairs in A Theory of Justice, it

was not until late in his career that Rawls formulated a comprehensive theory of
international politics with the publication of The Law of Peoples. He claimed there that
"well-ordered" peoples could be either "liberal" or "decent." Rawls's basic distinction in
international politics is that his preferred emphasis on a society of peoples is separate
from the more conventional and historical discussion of international politics as based on
relationships between states.
:
 Rawls argued that the legitimacy of a liberal international order is contingent on
tolerating decent peoples, which differ from liberal peoples, among other ways, in that
they might have state religions and deny adherents of minority faiths the right to hold
positions of power within the state, and might organize political participation via
consultation hierarchies rather than elections. However, no well-ordered peoples may
violate human rights or behave in an externally aggressive manner. Peoples that fail to
meet the criteria of "liberal" or "decent" peoples are referred to as 'outlaw states,'
'societies burdened by unfavourable conditions' or "benevolent absolutisms' depending
on their particular failings. Such peoples do not have the right to mutual respect and
toleration possessed by liberal and decent peoples.

Rawls's views on global distributive justice as they were expressed in this work surprised
many of his fellow egalitarian liberals. For example, Charles Beitz had previously written
a study that argued for the application of Rawls's Difference Principles globally. Rawls
denied that his principles should be so applied, partly on the grounds that a world state
does not exist and would not be stable. This notion has been challenged, as a
comprehensive system of global governance has arisen, amongst others in the form of
the Bretton Woods system, that serves to distribute primary social goods between
human beings. It has thus been argued that a cosmopolitan application of the theory of
justice as fairness is the more reasonable alternative to the application of The Law of
Peoples, as it would be more legitimate towards all persons over whom political coercive
power is exercised.[43]

According to Rawls however, nation states, unlike citizens, were self-sufficient in the
cooperative enterprises that constitute domestic societies. Although Rawls recognized
that aid should be given to governments which are unable to protect human rights for
economic reasons, he claimed that the purpose for this aid is not to achieve an eventual
state of global equality, but rather only to ensure that these societies could maintain
liberal or decent political institutions. He argued, among other things, that continuing to
give aid indefinitely would see nations with industrious populations subsidize those with
idle populations and would create a moral hazard problem where governments could
spend irresponsibly in the knowledge that they will be bailed out by those nations who
had spent responsibly.
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 Rawls's discussion of "non-ideal" theory, on the other hand, included a condemnation of
bombing civilians and of the American bombing of German and Japanese cities in World
War II, as well as discussions of immigration and nuclear proliferation. He also detailed
here the ideal of the statesman, a political leader who looks to the next generation and
promotes international harmony, even in the face of significant domestic pressure to act
otherwise. Rawls also controversially claimed that violations of human rights can
legitimize military intervention in the violating states, though he also expressed the hope
that such societies could be induced to reform peacefully by the good example of liberal
and decent peoples.

Influence and reception

Despite the exacting, academic tone of Rawls's writing and his reclusive personality, his
philosophical work has exerted an enormous impact on not only contemporary moral and
political philosophy but also public political discourse. During the student protests at
Tiananmen Square in 1989, copies of "A Theory of Justice" were brandished by
protesters in the face of government officials.[44][45][46] Despite being approximately
600 pages long, over 300,000 copies of that book have been sold,[47] stimulating critical
responses from utilitarian, feminist, conservative, libertarian, Catholic, communitarian,
Marxist and Green scholars, which Rawls welcomed.

Although having a profound influence on theories of distributive justice both in theory

and in practice, the generally anti-meritocratic sentiment of Rawls's thinking has not
been widely accepted by the political left. He consistently held the view that naturally
developed skills and endowments could not be neatly distinguished from inherited ones,
and that neither could be used to justify moral desert.[48] Instead, he held the view that
individuals could "legitimately expect" entitlements to the earning of income or
development of abilities based on institutional arrangements. This aspect of Rawls's
work has been instrumental in the development of such ideas as luck egalitarianism and
unconditional basic income, which have themselves been criticized.[49][50] The strictly
egalitarian quality of Rawls's second principle of justice has called into question the type
of equality that fair societies ought to embody.[51][52]
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 The Communitarian Critique …

Charles Taylor, Alasdair Macintyre, Michael Sandel, and Michael Walzer all have posed
formidable oppositions to Rawls's theory of justice throughout their careers, stimulating
a large reactionary body of normative and critical scholarship.[53]

The September Group …

The late philosopher G. A. Cohen, along with political scientist Jon Elster, and John
Roemer, used Rawls's writings extensively to inaugurate the Analytical Marxism
movement in the 1980s.

The Frankfurt School …

In a 2008 national survey of political theorists, based on 1,086 responses from

professors at accredited, four-year colleges and universities in the United States, Rawls
was voted first on the list of "Scholars Who Have Had the Greatest Impact on Political
Theory in the Past 20 Years", just ahead of Jürgen Habermas, whose scholarly work he
engaged with during the later part of his career (see Habermas-Rawls debate), and
Michel Foucault.[12] Habermas's reading of Rawls led to an appreciation of Rawls's work
and other analytical philosophers by the esteemed Frankfurt School of critical theory,
and many of Habermas's own students and associates were expected to be familiar with
Rawls by the late 1980s.[54] Rainer Forst, who was described in 2012 as the "most
important political philosopher of his generation"[55] was advised both by Rawls and
Habermas in completing his PhD.[56][57] Axel Honneth, Fabian Freyenhagen, and James
Gordon Finlayson have also drawn on Rawls's work in comparison to Habermas.

Feminist political philosophy …

Philosopher Eva Kittay has extended the work of John Rawls to address the concerns of
women and the cognitively disabled.[58]
:
 Awards and honors

Bronze Star for radio work behind enemy lines in World War II.[59]

Ralph Waldo Emerson Award (1972)

Member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (1992)[60]

Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy (1999)

National Humanities Medal (1999)

Asteroid 16561 Rawls is named in his honor.

Musical

John Rawls is featured as the protagonist of A Theory of Justice: The Musical!, an

award-nominated musical comedy, which premiered at Oxford in 2013 and was revived
for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.[61]

Publications

Bibliography …
A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to
Judgments on the Moral Worth of Character. Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University,
1950.

A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The 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.

Political Liberalism. The John Dewey Essays in Philosophy, 4. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1993. The hardback edition published in 1993 is not identical. The
paperback adds a valuable new introduction and an essay titled "Reply to Habermas."
:
 Some Rawls scholars use the abbreviation PL to refer to this work.

The Law of Peoples: with "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited." Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. This slim book includes two works; a
further development of his essay entitled "The Law of Peoples" and another entitled
"Public Reason Revisited," both published earlier in his career.

Collected Papers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999. This

collection of shorter papers was edited by Samuel Freeman.

Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy. (https://books.google.com/books/about/L

ectures_on_the_History_of_Moral_Philoso.html?id=CUBTPfTaEHYC) Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2000. This collection of lectures was edited
by Barbara Herman. It has an introduction on modern moral philosophy from 1600 to
1800 and then lectures on Hume, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel.

Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2001.

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. (https://books.google.com/books/about

/Lectures_on_the_History_of_Political_Phi.html?id=yKclZky1oUkC) Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007. Collection of lectures on Thomas
Hobbes, John Locke, Joseph Butler, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, John
Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, edited by Samuel Freeman.

A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard
University Press, 2010. With introduction and commentary by Thomas Nagel, Joshua
Cohen and Robert Merrihew Adams. Senior thesis, Princeton, 1942. This volume
includes a brief late essay by Rawls entitled On My Religion.

Articles …
"Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics." Philosophical Review (April 1951), 60 (2):
177–197.
:
 "Two Concepts of Rules." Philosophical Review (January 1955), 64 (1):3–32.

"Justice as Fairness." Journal of Philosophy (October 24, 1957), 54 (22): 653–362.

"Justice as Fairness." Philosophical Review (April 1958), 67 (2): 164–194.

"The Sense of Justice." Philosophical Review (July 1963), 72 (3): 281–305.

"Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice" Nomos VI (1963)

"Distributive Justice: Some Addenda." Natural Law Forum (1968), 13: 51–71.

"Reply to Lyons and Teitelman." Journal of Philosophy (October 5, 1972), 69 (18):

556–557.

"Reply to Alexander and Musgrave." Quarterly Journal of Economics (November 1974),

88 (4): 633–655.

"Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion." American Economic Review (May 1974), 64
(2): 141–146.

"Fairness to Goodness." Philosophical Review (October 1975), 84 (4): 536–554.

"The Independence of Moral Theory." Proceedings and Addresses of the American

Philosophical Association (November 1975), 48: 5–22.

"A Kantian Conception of Equality." Cambridge Review (February 1975), 96 (2225):

94–99.

"The Basic Structure as Subject." American Philosophical Quarterly (April 1977), 14

(2): 159–165.

"Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory." Journal of Philosophy (September 1980), 77

(9): 515–572.

"Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical." Philosophy & Public Affairs (Summer
1985), 14 (3): 223–251.

"The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus." Oxford Journal for Legal Studies (Spring
1987), 7 (1): 1–25.

"The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good." Philosophy & Public Affairs (Fall 1988),
:
 17 (4): 251–276.

"The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus." New York University Law
Review (May 1989), 64 (2): 233–255.

"Roderick Firth: His Life and Work." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
(March 1991), 51 (1): 109–118.

"The Law of Peoples." Critical Inquiry (Fall 1993), 20 (1): 36–68.

"Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas." Journal of Philosophy (March 1995), 92

(3):132–180.

"The Idea of Public Reason Revisited." Chicago Law Review (1997), 64 (3): 765–807.
[PRR]

Book chapters …
"Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice." In Carl J. Friedrich and John W.
Chapman, eds., Nomos, VI: Justice, pp. 98–125. Yearbook of the American Society for
Political and Legal Philosophy. New York: Atherton Press, 1963.

"Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play." In Sidney Hook, ed., Law and Philosophy:
A Symposium, pp. 3–18. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Proceedings of
the 6th Annual New York University Institute of Philosophy.

"Distributive Justice." In Peter Laslett and W. G. Runciman, eds., Philosophy, Politics,

and Society. Third Series, pp. 58–82. London: Blackwell; New York: Barnes & Noble,
1967.

"The Justification of Civil Disobedience." In Hugo Adam Bedau, ed., Civil

Disobedience: Theory and Practice, pp. 240–255. New York: Pegasus Books, 1969.

"Justice as Reciprocity." In Samuel Gorovitz, ed., Utilitarianism: John Stuart Mill: With
Critical Essays, pp. 242–268. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971.

"Author's Note." In Thomas Schwartz, ed., Freedom and Authority: An Introduction to

Social and Political Philosophy, p. 260. Encino & Belmont, California: Dickenson, 1973.

"Distributive Justice." In Edmund S. Phelps, ed., Economic Justice: Selected Readings,

:
 pp. 319–362. Penguin Modern Economics Readings. Harmondsworth & Baltimore:
Penguin Books, 1973.

"Personal Communication, January 31, 1976." In Thomas Nagel's "The Justification of

Equality." Critica (April 1978), 10 (28): 9n4.

"The Basic Liberties and Their Priority." In Sterling M. McMurrin, ed., The Tanner
Lectures on Human Values, III (1982), pp. 1–87. Salt Lake City: University of Utah
Press; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

"Social unity and primary goods" in Sen, Amartya; Williams, Bernard, eds. (1982).
Utilitarianism and beyond. Cambridge / Paris: Cambridge University Press / Editions de
la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. pp. 159–185. ISBN 978-0511611964.

"Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy." In Eckhart Forster, ed., Kant's Transcendental

Deductions: The Three Critiques and the Opus postumum, pp. 81–113, 253–256.
Stanford Series in Philosophy. Studies in Kant and German Idealism. Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Reviews …
Review of Axel Hägerström's Inquiries into the Nature of Law and Morals (C.D. Broad,
tr.). Mind (July 1955), 64 (255):421–422.

Review of Stephen Toulmin's An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950).

Philosophical Review (October 1951), 60 (4): 572–580.

Review of A. Vilhelm Lundstedt's Legal Thinking Revised. Cornell Law Quarterly

(1959), 44: 169.

Review of Raymond Klibansky, ed., Philosophy in Mid-Century: A Survey. Philosophical

Review (January 1961), 70 (1): 131–132.

Review of Richard B. Brandt, ed., Social Justice (1962). Philosophical Review (July
1965), 74(3): 406–409.

See also

List of American philosophers

:
 List of liberal theorists

Philosophy of economics

A Theory of Justice: The Musical!

Notes
1. Young, Shaun (2002). Beyond Rawls: An Analysis of the Concept of Political Liberalism (http
s://archive.org/details/beyondrawlsanaly0000youn) . Lanham, MD: University Press of
America. p. 59 (https://archive.org/details/beyondrawlsanaly0000youn/page/59) .
ISBN 978-0761822400.

2. "17. Distributive Justice and the Welfare State" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3urPwT

mTnI) – via www.youtube.com.

3. "Rawls" entry in Random House Dictionary, Random House, 2013.

4. Martin, Douglas (November 26, 2002). "John Rawls, Theorist on Justice, Is Dead at 82" (htt
ps://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/26/obituaries/26RAWL.html) . NY Times.

5. Wenar, Leif (2017). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://
plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/rawls/) (Spring 2017 ed.). Metaphysics
Research Lab, Stanford University.

6. Weinstein, Michael M. (December 1, 2002). "The Nation; Bringing Logic To Bear on Liberal
Dogma" (https://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/01/weekinreview/the-nation-bringing-logic-to-b
ear-on-liberal-dogma.html) . The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 (https://www.worldcat.
org/issn/0362-4331) . Retrieved September 7, 2021.

7. Will., Kymlicka (1990). Contemporary political philosophy : an introduction (https://archive.or

g/details/contemporarypoli00kyml_0/page/11) . Oxford [England]: Clarendon Press. pp. 11 (
https://archive.org/details/contemporarypoli00kyml_0/page/11) . ISBN 978-0198277248.
OCLC 21762535 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/21762535) .

8. Swift, Adam (2006). Political philosophy : a beginners' guide for students and politicians (htt
ps://archive.org/details/politicalphiloso00swif/page/10) (Second edition, revised and
expanded ed.). Cambridge: Polity. pp. 10 (https://archive.org/details/politicalphiloso00swif/p
age/10) . ISBN 978-0745635323. OCLC 63136336 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/631363
36) .

9. " "Political Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: Authors and Argument" by Catherine H.
:
 Zuckert (Ed.)" (https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/political-philosophy-in-the-twentieth-century-auth
ors-and-argument/) . Cambridge University Press. 2012. Retrieved January 21, 2020.

10. "Fair Opportunity to Participate" (http://ojs.unbc.ca/index.php/cpsr/article/viewPDFInterstitia

l/136/187) . The Canadian Political Science Review. June 2009.

11. "They Work For You search: "John Rawls" " (https://www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?s=%2
2john+rawls%22) . Theyworkforyou.com. Retrieved February 26, 2010.

12. Moore, Matthew J. (2009). "Political Theory Today: Results of a National Survey". Rochester,
NY. SSRN 1463648 (https://ssrn.com/abstract=1463648) .

13. "Obituary: John Rawls" (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/27/guardianobituaries

.obituaries) . The Guardian. 2012. Retrieved January 21, 2020.

14. Freeman, 2010:xix

15. Gordon, David (2008-07-28) Going Off the Rawls (http://www.theamericanconservative.com

/article/2008/jul/28/00024/) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20120224221101/http:/
/www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2008/jul/28/00024/) 2012-02-24 at the
Wayback Machine, The American Conservative

16. Anatory, Izidory. "The Influence of John Rawls and Robert Nozick Under Contemporary
Political Philosophy" (https://www.academia.edu/5618697) . Academia. Retrieved
January 21, 2020.

17. "Daily Princetonian 12 April 1940 – Princeton Periodicals" (http://theprince.princeton.edu/pri

ncetonperiodicals/cgi-bin/princetonperiodicals?a=d&d=Princetonian19400412-01.2.3&srpos
=2&e=-------en-20--1-byDA-txt-IN-rawls----#) . Theprince.princeton.edu. April 12, 1940.
Retrieved January 31, 2013.

18. Wenar, Leif (January 1, 2013). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). John Rawls (http://plato.stanford.edu/a
rchives/win2013/entries/rawls/) (Winter 2013 ed.).

19. Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel, "John Rawls: On My Religion" (http://entertainment.times
online.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article5931573.ece) , Times Literary
Supplement, 18 March 2009

20. Rawls, John Bordley (1943). "Meaning of Sin and Faith" (http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/8843
5/dsp01tt44pn90s) .

21. Nelson, Eric (December 2, 2019). "John Rawls' 'A Theory of Justice' and Jewish Heresy" (htt
ps://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/john-rawls-justice-jewish-heresy) .
Tablet Magazine. Retrieved April 19, 2020.
:
 Tablet Magazine. Retrieved April 19, 2020.

22. Article by Iain King, titled Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.org/articles/think

ers-at-war-john-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Monthly, 13 June 2014, accessed
20 November 2014.

23. "His first experience of combat was in New Guinea—a country which saw fighting for almost
the whole duration of the Pacific campaign—where he won a Bronze Star." From article by
Iain King, titled Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.org/articles/thinkers-at-wa
r-john-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Monthly, 13 June 2014, accessed 20
November 2014.

24. "Thinkers at War – John Rawls" (https://www.military-history.org/articles/thinkers-at-war-joh

n-rawls.htm) . Military History Monthly. June 13, 2014. Retrieved December 6, 2016.

25. "One soldier in a dugout close to Rawls stood up and deliberately removed his helmet to
take a bullet to the head, choosing to die rather than endure the constant barrage. ... Later
Rawls confided the whole experience was 'particularly terrible' ..." From an article by Iain
King, titled Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.org/articles/thinkers-at-war-jo
hn-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Monthly, 13 June 2014, accessed 20
November 2014.

26. "John Rawls: Theorist of Modern Liberalism" (http://www.heritage.org/political-process/repo

rt/john-rawls-theorist-modern-liberalism) . The Heritage Foundation. August 13, 2014.
Retrieved February 26, 2017.

27. Ronald J. Sider; Paul Charles Kemeny; Derek H. Davis; Clarke E. Cochran; Corwin Smidt
(2009). Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views. InterVarsity Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-
0830874743. "Religious beliefs, argues John Rawls—a Harvard philosopher and self-
identifying atheist—can be so divisive in a pluralistic culture that they subvert the stability of
a society."

28. From article by Iain King, titled Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.org/articles
/thinkers-at-war-john-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Monthly, 13 June 2014,
accessed 20 November 2014.

29. "The total obliteration of physical infrastructure, and the even more horrific human toll,
affected him deeply ... and the fact that the destruction had been deliberately inflicted by
his own side, was profoundly unsettling. He wrote that the scenes still haunted him 50 years
later." From an article by Iain King, titled Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.or
g/articles/thinkers-at-war-john-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Monthly, 13 June
2014, accessed 20 November 2014.
:
 30. From an article by Iain King, titled Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.org/artic
les/thinkers-at-war-john-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Monthly, 13 June 2014,
accessed 20 November 2014.

31. Date from Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.org/articles/thinkers-at-war-joh

n-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Monthly, 13 June 2014, accessed 20 November
2014.

32. Rogers, Ben (November 27, 2002). "Obituary: John Rawls" (https://www.theguardian.com/ne
ws/2002/nov/27/guardianobituaries.obituaries) . The Guardian. Retrieved August 26, 2018.

33. Rogers, 27.09.02

34. Hinsch, Wilfried (October 4, 2003). "Review of The Cambridge Companion to Rawls" (https:
//ndpr.nd.edu/news/the-cambridge-companion-to-rawls/) . Retrieved October 18, 2020.

35. "John Rawls, influential political philosopher, dead at 81" (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/

story/2002/12/john-rawls-influential-political-philosopher-dead-at-81-2/) . December 5,
2002.

36. Nussbaum, Martha; Frontiers of Justice; Harvard U Press; Cambridge, Massachusetts;

2006; Kindle location 1789

37. "Deciding what this new (Japanese) society should look like was the task of the Supreme
Command for the Allied Powers, and Rawls took this question—what should the rules of a
society be—back to the US. But only in 1971 did he come up with a comprehensive answer.
His theory starts by imagining away all that had gone before, just as the past had been
erased in Hiroshima." Taken from Thinker at War: Rawls (http://www.military-history.org/artic
les/thinkers-at-war-john-rawls.htm) , published in Military History Magazine, 13 June 2014,
accessed 20 November 2014.

38. Rawls 2001, pp. 114

39. Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. pp. Chapter 7.

40. Young Kim, Justice as Right Actions: An Original Theory of Justice in Conversation with
Major Contemporary Accounts (https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498516518/Justice-as-Right
-Actions-An-Original-Theory-of-Justice-in-Conversation-with-Major-Contemporary-Accou
nts) . Lexington Books, 2015. ISBN 978-1498516518; Iris Marion Young, Justice and the
Politics of Difference. Oxford University Press, 1990.

41. Rawls 1971, pp. 397

:
 42. Rawls 1971, pp. 216

43. Pols, Paul (2010). Applying Rawls in a Globalizing World (http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1

874/179525) (Thesis). University of Utrecht. hdl:1874/179525 (https://hdl.handle.net/1874
%2F179525) .

44. "With NEH grant, Notre Dame philosopher Paul Weithman planning conference on enduring
impact of John Rawls // College of Arts and Letters // University of Notre Dame" (https://al.n
d.edu/news/latest-news/with-neh-grant-notre-dame-philosopher-paul-weithman-planning-
conference-on-enduring-impact-of-john-rawls/) .

45. "John Rawls" (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2005/05/john-rawls/) . May 19, 2005.

46. "More Than Just a Theory | Quest Research Magazine" (https://quest.utk.edu/2013/more-th

an-just-a-theory/) . April 2, 2013.

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awls-a-theory-of-justice-1971.html) .

48. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/who-was-john-rawls-political-philosopher-
justice

49. https://www.philosophy.rutgers.edu/joomlatools-files/docman-
files/4ElizabethAnderson.pdf

50. Van Parijs, Philippe (1991). "Why Surfers Should be Fed: The Liberal Case for an
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51. Amartya Sen (May 22,1979). "Equality of What?" The Tanner Lecture on Human Values,
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52. Cohen, G. A. (1990). "Equality of What? On Welfare, Goods and Capabilities". Recherches
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Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2020.

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55. Frankfurt-Live, "Wichtigster politischer Philosoph" seiner Generation: DFG würdigt Leibniz-
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 018) Accessed on February 28, 2012

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57. Forst, Rainer; Forst, Professor Rainer (2002). Contexts of Justice (https://www.ucpress.edu/
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58. McAfee, Noëlle; Howard, Katie B. (2022), "Feminist Political Philosophy" (https://plato.stanfo
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References

Freeman, S. (2007) Rawls (Routledge, Abingdon)

Freeman, Samuel (2009) "Original Position" (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

Original Position (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/original-
position) )

Pols, Paul (2010). Applying Rawls in a Globalizing World (http://dspace.library.uu.nl/ha

ndle/1874/179525) (Thesis). University of Utrecht. hdl:1874/179525 (https://hdl.handl
e.net/1874%2F179525) .

Rawls, J. (1993/1996/2005) Political Liberalism (Columbia University Press, New York)

Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice (Original ed.). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674017726.
:
 Rawls, John (2001). Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674005112.

Rogers, B. (27.09.02) "Obituary: John Rawls" Obituary: John Rawls (https://www.thegu

ardian.com/news/2002/nov/27/guardianobituaries.obituaries)

Tampio, N. (2011) "A Defense of Political Constructivism" (Contemporary Political

Theory, A defense of political constructivism (http://www.palgrave-journals.com/cpt/jo
urnal/vaop/ncurrent/full/cpt201127a.html) (subscription required))

Wenar, Leif (2008) "John Rawls" (The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John
Rawls (http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/rawls/) )

Wilkinson, Will (2008). "Rawls, John (1921–2002)" (https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/

libertarianism/n255.xml) . In Hamowy, Ronald (ed.). The Encyclopedia of
Libertarianism (https://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC) . Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage; Cato Institute. pp. 415–416. doi:10.4135/9781412965811.n255 (https:/
/doi.org/10.4135%2F9781412965811.n255) . ISBN 978-1412965804.
LCCN 2008009151 (https://lccn.loc.gov/2008009151) . OCLC 750831024 (https://ww
w.worldcat.org/oclc/750831024) .

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: John Rawls

Audio recordings of Rawls's 1983 lecture course "Modern Political Philosophy" (http://
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philosophy-recorded-at-harvard-1984.html/)

Cambridge Rawls Lexicon (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-rawls-le

xicon/56E9EFE4800DFA831929F3F563A9C016)

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on John Rawls by Henry S. Richardson (http

://www.iep.utm.edu/rawls/)

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Political Constructivisim by Michael

Buckley (http://www.iep.utm.edu/poli-con/)
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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Original Position by Fred D'Agostino (htt

ps://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Reflective Equilibrium by Norman

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