Justice as fairness : a restatement /
John Rawls ; edited by Erin Kelly.
- xviii, 214 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Nominated for Pulitzer Prizes 2002 Nominated for Frederic W. Ness Book Award 2003 Nominated for Rachel Carson Prize & Ludwik Fleck Prize 2002 Nominated for Littleton-Griswold Prize 2002
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Principles of Justice -- The Argument from the Original Position -- Institutions of a Just Basic Structure -- The Question of Stability.
This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement of his theory of justice as fairness, revised in light of his more recent papers and his treatise Political Liberalism (1993). Rawls offers a broad overview of his main lines of thought and also explores specific issues never before addressed in any of his writings. He is well aware that since the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, American society has moved farther away from the idea of justice as fairness. Yet his ideas retain their power and relevance to debates in a pluralistic society about the meaning and theoretical viability of liberalism. This book demonstrates that moral clarity can be achieved even when a collective commitment to justice is uncertain.