A Theory of Justice

Rawls argues that justice is the first virtue of social institutions, meaning that a society's basic structure must be just before it can be considered legitimate, regardless of its efficiency or prosperity [citation:6]. He rejects utilitarianism, which had dominated Anglo-Saxon political thought since the nineteenth century, because it permits the loss of freedom for some to be justified by a greater good shared by others [citation:6][citation:16]. Instead, Rawls revives the social contract tradition, asking what principles free and equal rational persons would choose to govern their society from an initial position of equality.

Rawls introduced the original position and the veil of ignorance as a device of representation: parties choosing principles of justice do not know their place in society, their class, natural talents, or conception of the good [citation:1]. This ensures the principles chosen are fair rather than tailored to any particular advantage. The resulting 'justice as fairness' yields two principles: equal basic liberties, and the difference principle permitting inequalities only if they benefit the least advantaged. These concepts are now standard in political philosophy and are used in debates about distributive justice, healthcare, and global justice [citation:14].

Rawls came to believe that A Theory of Justice failed to adequately address the stability of a well-ordered society, specifically the threat that a just society could be undermined by a generalized prisoner's dilemma [citation:3]. In Political Liberalism (1993), he recast justice as fairness as a political conception rather than a comprehensive moral doctrine, aimed at addressing the 'fact of pluralism' in modern democratic societies [citation:8]. While some read this as a repudiation of the earlier egalitarianism, scholars argue that Political Liberalism does not abandon the difference principle but seeks a firmer foundation for it [citation:13].

Communitarian critics, including Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre, argued that Rawls's original position assumes a fundamentally disembodied and atomistic self, ignoring the fact that people are socially constituted by their communities and traditions [citation:19]. They claimed Rawls seeks an unavailable Archimedean point from which to construct a universal blueprint for society. Libertarian critics like Robert Nozick argued that Rawls's construction is incapable of yielding an entitlement or historical conception of distributive justice, and that his difference principle conflicts with precisely correct principles of acquisition and transfer [citation:9].

A Theory of Justice is widely credited with revitalizing political philosophy, which by the late 1960s was in danger of becoming sterile and trivial due to an emphasis on metaethics [citation:10]. It transformed the discipline and remains the focal point for much of the political philosophy of the last half-century [citation:15]. New generations facing major recessions have rediscovered Rawls's work for the more radical purposes it was intended for [citation:15]. However, critics note persistent gaps in his treatment of gender, race, and intergenerational justice, including Susan Moller Okin's argument that his methodology cannot adequately address justice within the family [citation:14].

The most common misconception is that the veil of ignorance requires the parties to be entirely ignorant of all facts about themselves and society. In fact, Rawls specifies that parties know general facts about human psychology, economics, and political sociology, and they understand the 'circumstances of justice' [citation:1]. What they do not know are their particular contingent attributes: their conception of the good, their social position, natural talents, and which generation they belong to [citation:14]. The veil is not a demand for total ignorance but a device to ensure fairness in the choice of principles.