![]() In John Rawls: Reticent Socialist, William A. Rawls’s basic theoretical approach risked buttressing the existing order by making it seem like the inevitable product of consensual reasoning - obscuring rather than clarifying political possibility. The just society derived from Rawls’s famous thought experiment - where rational parties in an “original position” design a social contract unaware of their ultimate place in the society they create - largely mirrors the United States’ basic social, political, and legal institutions. For many of his admirers, Rawls represents the best of the liberal tradition, and his theory of justice offers a rigorous defense of liberalism’s most humane hope: a democratic welfare state that preserves capitalism while also keeping it in check.įor critics on the Left, Rawls’s theory has often seemed insufficient for a critique of injustice. His major work, A Theory of Justice(1971), redefined the field of political philosophy, shaping generations of subsequent scholarship on politics, ethics, and law. ![]() ![]() John Rawls was one of the twentieth century’s preeminent liberal philosophers. Review of John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (Cambridge University Press, 2017) ![]()
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