A Theory of Justice

In The You On AI Encyclopedia

The book is organized into three parts. Part One develops the theory — the original position, the veil of ignorance, the two principles, the arguments for their acceptance. Part Two applies the theory to institutions — the constitution, the economic system, the relationship between liberty and equality, civil disobedience. Part Three explores the theory's psychological foundations — the moral psychology that makes justice as fairness a stable conception, the sense of justice, the congruence of justice and the good.

The work's influence extended far beyond philosophy. It reshaped economics (particularly welfare economics and the theory of social choice), law (particularly constitutional theory), and political science (particularly normative democratic theory). It generated a literature of response that has not abated in the five decades since publication. Major critical works including Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Sandel's Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, and Okin's Justice, Gender, and the Family took A Theory of Justice as their primary interlocutor.

Rawls revised the book substantially for a 1999 second edition, responding to criticisms and refining arguments. The revised edition is the canonical version for most contemporary scholarly purposes, though the 1971 first edition remains philosophically and historically significant. The book's relationship to the AI transition was not anticipated by its author, but its framework has proven remarkably well-suited to the analysis of institutional questions that Rawls could not have foreseen — questions about the governance of technologies that reshape the basic structure of society at a speed and scope no previous technology has matched.

Origin

Rawls began the work that became A Theory of Justice in the late 1950s. Core elements appeared in articles published during the 1960s — "Justice as Fairness" (1958), "Distributive Justice" (1967), "The Sense of Justice" (1963). The full book was published by Harvard University Press in 1971. A revised edition appeared in 1999, incorporating changes Rawls had developed in response to critical engagement with the first edition.

Key Ideas

The original position and veil of ignorance. The methodological devices through which impartial principles of justice are generated.

The two principles of justice. Equal basic liberties; fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle; arranged in lexical priority.

The basic structure as primary subject. Justice applies first and foremost to the fundamental institutions of society, not directly to individual actions.

Reflective equilibrium. The method by which theoretical principles and particular judgments are brought into mutual support through iterative adjustment.

Stability through moral psychology. The book's third part argues that justice as fairness is stable because it coheres with a plausible moral psychology and supports the conditions of its own endorsement.