Rawls's A theory of justice : a reader's guide

176 Pages·2011·0.602 MB·English

by  Lovett, Frank, Rawls, John

RAWLS’S A THEORY OF JUSTICE
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RAWLS’S A THEORY
OF JUSTICE
A Reader’s Guide
FRANK LOVETT
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Frank Lovett, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage
or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.
Excerpts from A Theory of Justice by John Rawls reprinted by
permission of the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA. Copyright © 1971, 1999 by the President and
Fellows of Harvard College.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-3781-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lovett, Frank.
Rawls’s A theory of justice : a reader’s guide / Frank Lovett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-0-8264-3781-5
1. Rawls, John, 1921–2002. Theory of justice. 2. Justice. I. Title.
JC578.R383L58 2010
320.01'1–dc22
2010013372
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt Ltd
For Liz
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments viii
1 Introduction and Context 1
1.1 Biography and historical background 1
1.2 The philosophical background 4
1.3 Overview of Rawls’s writings 12
2 Overview of Themes 14
2.1 The main idea of A Theory of Justice 14
2.2 The text: a quick guide 20
3 Reading the Text 23
3.1 An outline of justice as fairness (§§ 1–3) 23
3.2 Utilitarianism and intuitionism (§§ 5–8) 30
3.3 Reflective equilibrium and method (§§ 4, 9) 37
3.4 The two principles of justice (§§ 10–14) 44
3.5 Characterizing justice as fairness (§§ 15–17) 65
3.6 The original position (§§ 20, 22, 24–25) 75
3.7 The presentation of alternatives (§§ 21, 23) 87
3.8 The argument for justice as fairness (§§ 26–30, 33) 94
3.9 The institutions of a just society
(§§ 31–32, 34–39, 41–43) 110
3.10 Completing the argument (§§ 40, 44–50) 117
3.11 Justice and the individual (§§ 18–19, 51–59) 128
3.12 The search for stability (§§ 60–87) 136
4 Reception and Influence 143
4.1 A Theory of Justice as a classic 143
4.2 The liberal-communitarian debate 144
4.3 Further debates and current standing 150
Notes 155
Bibliography and Further Reading 159
Index 163
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I was first invited to write this reader’s guide by Sarah
Campbell, I naively assumed that it would be a simple matter
of transcribing my well-worn lecture notes on Rawls’s A Theory
of Justice into prose. In the event, it not only proved much
more challenging, but also much more rewarding than I had
anticipated. I would like to thank Ian MacMullen, Ron Watson,
and my wife Liz Vickerman for carefully reading and com-
menting on earlier drafts; Amanda Sabele for helping secure
the necessary permissions; Sarah Campbell, Tom Crick, and
P. Muralidharan at Continuum Books for guiding the book to
print; and finally, my students at Washington University in
St. Louis, who have consistently challenged me to understand
Rawls better than I might ever have done on my own.
viii
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT
1.1 BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
John Rawls (1921–2002) was an American political philosopher.
His father, William Lee Rawls, was a successful and respected
lawyer whose family had moved to Baltimore from the south
when he was a child; his mother, Anna Abell Rawls, descended
from the formerly affluent Stump family. Both his parents
were strongly interested in politics, and his mother in particular
campaigned for women’s rights with the League of Women
Voters. Rawls had four brothers, one older and three younger,
two of whom died from illness when he was still young. He
attended Princeton University as an undergraduate, completing
his AB in philosophy in the fall of 1943. Though he briefly
contemplated going on to seminary school to study religion
after college, like most of his classmates at that time he chose
first to enlist in the army. He served with an intelligence and
reconnaissance unit in the Pacific theater for 2 years, earning a
Bronze Star, but his experiences there weakened his religious
convictions. When he began his graduate studies after the
war—again at Princeton—it was in philosophy not religion.
Rawls completed his PhD in 1950, writing a dissertation on
moral philosophy. During this time he also married Margaret
Warfield Fox, with whom he eventually had four children (two
daughters and two sons).
After lecturing and extending his studies for two extra years
at Princeton, Rawls won a Fulbright scholarship to study at
Oxford in the 1952–1953 academic year. There he encountered
H. L. A. Hart, Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, R. M. Hare,
and some other major philosophers of the time, who greatly
influenced the development of his own views. On returning
to the United States, he landed his first faculty position at
Cornell University, where he taught from 1953 until 1959.
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