John Rawls : His Life And Theory of Justice

1. Biography 3 1.1 Family and Schooling 4 1.2 College and War 9 1.3 Academic Career 16 1.4 The Turbulent Decade 1962-1971 18 1.5 After A Theory of Justice 22 1.6 The Meaning of Rawls's Project 26 2. The Focus on the Basic Structure 28 2.1 The Origin of the Theory 29 2.2 The Complexity of Modern Societies 31 2.3 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus 34 2.4 The Scope of the Theory 38 3. A Top-Tier Criterion of Justice 42 3.1 Purely Recipient-Oriented Criteria of Justice 43 3.2 The Anonymity Condition 48 3.3 Fundamental Interests versus Happiness 54 4. The Basic Idea: Justice as Fairness 60 4.1 The Original Position 60 4.2 Maximin versus Average 67 4.3 Primary Goods 73 4.4 The Lexical Priority of the Basic Liberties 77 5. The First Principle of Justice 82 5.1 The Structure of a Basic Right 83 5.2 Formulating the Required Scheme of Basic Rights and Liberties 85 5.3 The Fair Value of the Basic Political Liberties 91 5.4 Permissible Reductions of Basic Liberties 96 5.5 Impermissible Reductions of Basic Liberties 101 6. The Second Principle of Justice 106 6.1 The Difference Principle in First Approximation 106 6.2 The Difference Principle in Detail 110 6.3 Advocating the Difference Principle in the Original Position 115 6.4 The Opportunity Principle 120 6.5 Advocating the Opportunity Principle in the Original Position 126 6.6 A Property-Owning Democracy 133 7. A Rawlsian Society 135 7.1 A Well-Ordered Society 137 7.2 A Political Conception of Justice 139 7.3 Political versus Comprehensive Liberalisms 144 7.4 An Egalitarian Liberal Conception of Justice 148 7.5 A Society Well-Ordered by Rawls's Conception 153 7.6 A More Realistic Vision 156 8. On Justification 161 8.1 Reflective Equilibrium 162 8.2 Fundamental Ideas 170 8.3 Truth and Reasonableness 174 9. The Reception of Justice as Fairness 178 9.1 Rawls and Libertarianism 178 9.2 Rawls and Communitarianism 185 9.3 Rawls and Kant 188 Conclusion 196 Appendix 197 A.1 Timeline 197 A.2 Literature 198 A.2.1 Works by Rawls 198 A.2.2 Selected Secondary Works 199 A.2.2.1 Collections 199 A.2.2.2 Monographs 200 A.2.2.3 Essays 204 Index 215