A Theory of Justice
Rawls's reconstruction of social-contract political philosophy through the original position and the veil of ignorance
Tradition: Anglo-American liberal political philosophy
Justice is fairness — the principles rational persons would choose behind a veil of ignorance, ignorant of their own social position
A Theory of Justice is the most influential work of twentieth-century Anglo-American political philosophy. Rawls reconstructs the social-contract tradition through the device of the "original position": rational persons behind a "veil of ignorance" (knowing nothing about their own social position, talents, race, sex, or comprehensive doctrine) would choose two principles of justice — equal basic liberties, and the difference principle, that inequalities are justified only insofar as they benefit the least advantaged. Across three parts (the theory of justice, institutions, ends) the book develops the position against utilitarian, perfectionist, and intuitionist alternatives. Together with Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), it defines the contemporary terrain of liberal-political philosophy.
Editions cited
- A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Harvard, 1999)
- A Theory of Justice (Harvard, 1971, first edition)
- Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Erin Kelly, Harvard, 2001 — Rawls's own short summary)
School Embodiments
Rawls's "Kantian constructivism" treats principles of justice as constructed from the original position's procedure rather than discovered in an antecedent moral order. This is the canonical statement of metaethical constructivism in political philosophy.
"My aim is to present a conception of justice which generalises and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract." (Theory of Justice §3)
Rawls explicitly identifies his project as Kantian — the original position's veil-of-ignorance is a procedural device for modelling the categorical imperative's impartial standpoint.
"The original position is intended to incorporate into the procedure of choice the Kantian requirements of universality and impartiality." (Theory of Justice §40)
Rawls's working political realism — institutions are evaluated by what they actually produce for real human beings in real social positions — embeds the constructivist procedure in a recognisably pragmatic temperament.
"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought." (Theory of Justice §1, opening)
Rawls was himself a Christian as a young man (his undergraduate thesis was on community and theology) and his political philosophy has been read by Christian liberals — Wolterstorff, Hauerwas in critique, Nicholas Rescher — as a serious philosophical interlocutor.
"Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." (Theory of Justice §1)
Critical-realist political theorists (Bhaskar, Sayer) read Rawls as the principal modern attempt to derive norms from the procedural conditions of rational social co-existence — a structure they extend with more realist treatment of social structure.
"Society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage." (Theory of Justice §1)
A residual but real connection: Rawls's reflective equilibrium method tests principles against considered moral judgements in a manner empiricist epistemology finds congenial.
"Justice as fairness is not at the mercy, so to speak, of existing wants and interests." (Theory of Justice §40)
The difference principle's concern for the least advantaged has been engaged seriously by Christian social ethics, liberation theology, and Catholic social teaching — sometimes as resource, sometimes as competitor.
"All social primary goods — liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect — are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution... is to the advantage of the least favoured." (Theory of Justice §11)
Social-democratic distributive justice.
Internal Tensions
Rawls himself spent the next twenty-five years (Political Liberalism, 1993; Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 2001) revising the Theory in response to objections. The most serious internal tensions are over the status of the original position (whether it is a moral foundation or a modelling device), the relation between the two principles and the difference principle, and the application to international justice (which The Law of Peoples, 1999, attempts). External critics include Nozick (libertarianism), Sandel (communitarianism), and feminist critics (Okin) on the family as part of the basic structure.
I. Time
Rawls's framework presupposes standard real time. The just-savings principle (§44) is one of the earliest systematic treatments of intergenerational justice — each generation must save enough for the next to also enjoy the conditions of justice.
Attributes
II. Space
Not theorised; standard background. The political community is the "basic structure" of a society.
Attributes
III. Matter
Real, conserved. The "primary social goods" include both material and non-material; the difference principle governs their distribution.
Attributes
IV. Observer
The Rawlsian observer is the rational, embodied, plural citizen — abstractable into the original-position self for theoretical purposes, but realised as a biographically situated person in actual political life. Moral authority is constructed through the procedure of the original position. The metaphysical agency is None — Rawls's mature work explicitly brackets "comprehensive doctrines" including theistic ones for the purposes of public reason (developed in Political Liberalism, 1993).
Attributes
V. Energy
Not engaged.
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VI. Information
The veil of ignorance is a constructive informational device — what one doesn't know about one's own position is the procedural input from which fair principles emerge. Information is relational and procedurally constituted in Rawls's working argument.
Attributes
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How A Theory of Justice resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.