New book: Rawls’s "A Theory of Justice" at 50

Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at 50

Ed. by Paul Weithman

(Cambridge University Press, 2023)

377 pages

Description

In 1971 John Rawls's A Theory of Justice transformed twentieth-century political philosophy, and it ranks among the most influential works in the history of the subject. This volume of new essays marks the 50th anniversary of its publication with a multi-faceted exploration of Rawls's most important book. A team of distinguished contributors reflects on Rawls's achievement in essays on his relationship to modern political philosophy and 20th-century economic theory, on his Kantianism, on his transition to political liberalism, on his account of public reason and contemporary challenges to it, on his theory's implications for problems of racial justice, on democracy and its fragility, and on Rawls's enduring legacy. 

Contents 

Introduction [preview] - Paul Weithman 

Part I: Rawls and History

1. Taillight Illumination: How Rawlsian Concepts May Improve Understanding of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy - S. A. Lloyd

2. The Theory Rawls, the 1844 Marx, and the Market - Daniel Brudney

3. Rawls, Lerner, and the Tax-and-Spend Booby Trap: What Happened to Monetary Policy? [paper] - Aaron James

4. Rawls’s Principles of Justice as a Transcendence of Class Warfare - Elizabeth Anderson

5. The Significance of Injustice - Peter de Marneffe

Part II: Developments between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism

6. On Being a “Self-Originating Source of Valid Claims” - Stephen Darwall

7. Moral Independence Revisited: A Note on the Development of Rawls’s Thought from 1977–1980 and Beyond - Samuel Scheffler

8. The Method of Insulation: On the Development of Rawls’s Thought after A Theory of Justice - Rainer Forst

9. The Stability or Fragility of Justice [paper] - Japa Pallikkathayil

Part III: Rawls, Ideal Theory, and the Persistence of Injustice

10. The Circumstances of Justice [paper] - Erin I. Kelly

11. Why Rawls’s Ideal Theory Leaves the Well-Ordered Society Vulnerable to Structural Oppression - Henry S. Richardson

12. Race, Reparations, and Justice as Fairness - Tommie Shelby

13. On the Role of the Original Position in Rawls’s Theory: Reassessing the “Idealization” and “Fact-sensitivity” Critiques - Laura Valentini

Part IV: Pluralism, Democracy, and the Future of Justice as Fairness

14. Public Reason at Fifty - Kevin Vallier

15. Reasonable Political Conceptions and the Well-Ordered Liberal Society - Samuel Freeman

16. Religious Pluralism and Social Unions - Paul Weithman

17. One Person, at Least One Vote? Rawls on Political Equality …within Limits - David Estlund

18. Reflections on Democracy’s Fragility [paper] - Joshua Cohen

19. A Society of Self-Respect [paper] - Leif Wenar