The principles of justice that should undergird a society and government, Rawls argued, are those set out in the social contract that members of society would hypothetically agree to behind a “veil of ignorance,” which prevents them from knowing what place in that society they would occupy. Rawls’s key contribution was reviving the idea of a social contract, as detailed by philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau centuries before. His language and ideas have penetrated into political life, especially in the UK and US, because of their particular power in analyzing the deep economic inequalities that have grown in developed countries over the last few decades.įifty years on, Rawls’s most enduring legacy has been helping the generations that came after him make sense of what is unjust about a world characterized by both widespread destitution and outrageous wealth. But Rawls’s importance extends far beyond seminar walls and philosophy departments. That literature, in turn, has had profound influence on the wider world (Scanlon’s work even inspired a sitcom, of all things). And so on, for thousands of books and articles. Frank Michelman brought Rawls into the law. Tim Scanlon brought Rawlsian concepts to bear on individual ethics. Robert Nozick offered a libertarian rejoinder that nonetheless spoke Rawls’s language Susan Moller Okin critiqued Rawls’s neglect of the family and gender inequality.Ĭharles Mills argued Rawls’s theory could not take white supremacy seriously as a political system. The decades after the book’s publication were dominated by responses to Rawls and responses to responses to Rawls. This year marks its 50th anniversary, with conferences on the occasion at University of Virginia Law School and Notre Dame. A Theory of Justice, his most famous work, has been cited nearly 60,000 times by one metric. When he died in 2002, one remembrance noted that over 3,000 articles specifically about Rawls had been published during his lifetime. The Harvard philosopher looms over contemporary political thought, particularly on the left, in a way rivaled by no other scholar. A philosopher once described European philosophy as essentially “ a series of footnotes to Plato” it would be no exaggeration to describe the history of political philosophy over the past half-century as a series of footnotes and responses to John Rawls.
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