John Rawls's A Theory of Justice: Can philosophy provide us
with the rules for a just society?
Our next Philosophy Café (December 16 at 7:30 p.m.)
will be on John Rawls's book A Theory of Justice (“TJ”),
considered by some to be no less than the seminal work of 20th
century political philosophy.
Rawls
attempts to determine the fundamental principles of social justice.
He employs a number of
thought experiments, including the "original position" – in which those who will decide what rules shall govern society are assumed to be
situated behind a "veil of ignorance" in
which they do not know which social positions (e.g. gender, race) or assets
(e.g., wealth, intelligence) they will have during their life on earth, nor
what fundamental conceptions of the “good life” they will hold.
Rawls thus takes the “social contract” approach of
philosophers such as Rousseau, but attempts to apply it concretely so as to
determine what specific rules and institutions would be adopted by the
“contracting parties” who set out to create our social order.
Countless summaries, critiques, and abstracts of TJ
can be found in print and online. The book itself is well worth reading;
but a few options for shorter versions include:
TJ
also gave rise to countless books and articles that challenges Rawls,
philosophically and/or politically, from the left and the right, as well as
from non-Western traditions.
One of the earliest and best-known critiques of
TJ
was Nozick's
Anarchy, State & Utopia, which attacks Rawls
largely from a libertarian perspective. See
http://www.iep.utm.edu/nozick/#H2 for
a summary of Nozick's view (specifically Part 2).
