John+Rawls

​ John Rawls, (1921-2001) was an American political philosopher. His theory of justice as fairness envisions a society of citizens with equal basic rights with an egilitarian economic system.

John Rawls was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. His father was a prestigious lawyer and his mother was chapter president for the league of women voters. Rawls first study philosophy at Princeton and Oxford and later went on to teach at Harvard for more than thirty years.

As a young adult Rawls considered studying to become a priest but lost his faith after being drafted into the military during world war two and witnessing the atrocities of war. Several years later Rawls was an outspoken activist against the vietnam war.

His most significant achievment was his theory of a just liberal society called //justice as fairness// which he explained in detail in his 1971 book __A Theory of Justice.__

Rawls saw political philosophy as fulfilling at least four roles in a society's public life.

The first role is practical: political philosophy can discover bases for reasoned agreement in a society where sharp divisions threaten to lead to conflict. Rawls cites the //Federalist Papers// as emerging from the debate over the US Constitution.

A second role of political philosophy is to help citizens to orient themselves within their own social world. Philosophy can describe what it is to be a member of a society with a certain political status, and suggest how the nature and history of that society can be understood from a broader perspective.

A third role is to probe the limits of practicable political possibility. Political philosophy must describe workable political arrangements that can gain support from real people. Yet within these limits philosophy can be utopian: it can depict a social order that is the best that one can hope for.

A fourth role of political philosophy is reconciliation: “to calm our frustration and rage against our society and its history by showing us the way in which its institutions… are rational, and developed over time as they did to attain their present, rational form. Philosophy can show that human life is not simply domination and cruelty, prejudice, folly and corruption; but that in some ways at least it is better that it has become the way that it is. media type="youtube" key="_zSQ4d1JtDg" height="344" width="425" align="left"

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