John Rawls
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John Rawls was an influential American philosopher who developed major theories about justice and how societies should be organized fairly. His ideas shaped modern political philosophy and continue to inform debates about rights, equality, and what makes a just society.
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John Bordley Rawls (February 21, 1921 - November 24, 2002) was an American philosopher and a leading figure in moral and political philosophy. He held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship at Harvard University. His magnum opus, A Theory of Justice (1971), was hailed at the time of its publication as "the most important work in moral philosophy since the end of World War II", and is now regarded as "one of the primary texts in political philosophy. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/J
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John Bordley Rawls (/rɔːlz/; February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the modern liberal tradition. Rawls has been described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century.
In 1990, Will Kymlicka wrote in his introduction to the field that "it is generally accepted that the recent rebirth of normative political philosophy began with the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971". Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society in any case where inequalities may occur. His argument for these principles of social justice uses a thought experiment called the "original position", in which people deliberatively select what kind of society they would choose to live in if they did not know which social position they would personally occupy. In his later work Political Liberalism (1993), he addresses the question of how political power can be exercised legitimately in a society where citizens hold diverse and often conflicting moral, religious, and philosophical points of view.
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1921 births2002 deaths20th-century American essayists20th-century American male writers20th-century American philosophers20th-century atheists21st-century American essayists21st-century American male writers21st-century American philosophers21st-century atheistsAmerican AtheistsAmerican male essayists