Rawls, John (1921–2002)

John Rawls, an American philosopher who held the position of Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University, is widely considered to be the most [Page 1768]important political philosopher of the latter part of the 20th century. His highly influential writings have contributed greatly to the shaping of contemporary political thought. He began his philosophic career in the context of a cultural climate permeated by the assumptions of utilitarianism with its understanding of individuals as merely means to a goal of general social well-being. A strong advocate of the liberal political tradition, he argued for a political philosophy that, unlike utilitarianism, stresses issues of justice and individual rights.

In his most important work, A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, Rawls sought procedures that embodied the moral ideal of justice and put forth his fundamental insight that every individual has an inviolability rooted in justice that cannot be overridden even for the welfare of society as a whole. Basing his political theory on the idea of justice as fairness, he postulated a hypothetical or original position, in which free, equal, and rational individuals devoid of any social attributes, particular ends, or attachments might agree on principles of social cooperation. These individuals deliberate from a basis of self-interested rationality and do so within a veil of ignorance that shields them from morally irrelevant knowledge such as social status or wealth. By insuring impartiality, Rawls concludes that all parties involved would place a high priority on basic liberties, for they would not want to risk a loss of freedom in whatever segment of society they may find themselves. Second, they would choose distribution of fundamental goods that allowed for inequalities only when such inequalities would raise the level of the least well-off. The principles for this social contract result from rational insights, and what results is a temporal, rationally constructed frame or social contract imposed on the contingencies of real-life existence. Social structure is in some sense postulated in abstract principles, and social reasoning is by and large the application of the rule to the particular case.

In Political Liberalism, Rawls keeps the key tenets of A Theory of Justice but emphasizes that all modern societies have diverse views on basic issues of value, the significance of life, and the relation of these to belief in God. Thus, he concludes that liberal political principles must be acceptable to a wide range of viewpoints. In Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Rawls again holds fast to his core ideas, but formation of the fundamental principles through intuitions is modified to the position that there is a certain ideal implied—that of Western liberal democracies—and the basic values of the agent, now called citizen, are not derived from fundamental intuitions but from an overlapping consensus, thus allowing for more pluralism. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Rawls's position, his work has been, and will continue to be, a powerful impetus for political, social, and philosophical debates, and its scope is unmatched in recent times.