John Rawls: Reticent Socialist

William A. Edmundson

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781107173194
• eBook ISBN: 9781316805367
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Jurisprudence
• Index: Law

This book is the first detailed reconstruction of the late work of John Rawls, who was perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. Rawls's 1971 treatise, A Theory of Justice, stimulated an outpouring of commentary on 'justice-as-fairness, ' his conception of justice for an ideal, self-contained, modern political society. Most of that commentary took Rawls to be defending welfare-state capitalism as found in Western Europe and the United States. Far less attention has been given to Rawls's 2001 book, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. In the Restatement, Rawls not only substantially reformulates the 'original position' argument for the two principles of justice-as-fairness but also repudiates capitalist regimes as possible embodiments. Edmundson further develops Rawls's non-ideal theory, which guides us when we find ourselves in a society that falls well short of justice.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Epigraph
• Dedication
• Table of contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Conceptions of Property in the Original Position
• 2 Property-Owning Democracy versus Liberal Socialism
• 3 Fair Value and the Fact of Domination
• 4 The Four-Stage Sequence
• 5 The Circumstances of Politics
• 6 Rescuing the Difference Principle
• 7 The Special Psychologies
• 8 Socialism and Stability
• 9 The Common Content of the Two Regimes
• 10 The Property Question
• 11 Religion and Reticence
• 12 Non-Ideal Theory: The Transition to Socialism
• Bibliography
• Index