Rawls explained
Subtitle: from fairness to utopia
By: Paul Voice
Series: Ideas explained -- v. 8; Ideas explained series -- 8.
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 206
ISBN-13: 9780812696806
Subjects: Justice
Description: We live in a world that is increasingly unjust. In many liberal democratic societies the gap between the best-off and the worst-off grows larger. Other societies pursue economic growth while remaining blind to their citizens' political rights and freedoms. The citizens of some other societies are so bereft of basic resources that they struggle to maintain their human dignity.

In this context Rawls challenges us to see the world through the lens of fairness. Injustice can only be effectively challenged if we can articulate, to ourselves and to others, both why a situation is unjust and how we might move towards justice. Political philosophy at its best offers both an answer to the why of injustice and the how of political and economic change.

This book is divided into three parts corresponding to the three great books that form the core of John Rawls's theory: A Theory of Justice (1971), Political Liberalism (1993), and The Law of Peoples (1999). Rawls Explained sets out Rawls's ideas in the form of a critical exposition that elaborates the central themes and philosophical background of his arguments. Each section of the book ends with a survey of some of the main criticisms of the arguments coupled with Rawls's strongest counterarguments. --Book Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: -- 1.; title: Two Introductory Ideas --; title: The Idea, of Reasonable Hope --; title: The Argument from Imaginative Identification -- -- 2.; title: The Analytic of Justice --; title: The Original Position --; title: Persons --; title: Moral Personality --; title: Persons as Rational --; title: Persons as Reasonable --; title: Self-Conception --; title: Persons as Free --; title: Persons as Equal --; title: Circumstances Of Choice --; title: Circumstances of Justice --; title: Objective Circumstances --; title: Subjective Circumstances --; title: Epistemic Constraints --; title: Veil of Ignorance --; title: Motivational Constraints --; title: Mutual Disinterest --; title: Strains of Commitment --; title: Method Of Reasoning --; title: Formal Constraints of Reason --; title: Maximin Principle --; title: The Objects Of Deliberation --; title: Basic Structure --; title: Primary Goods --; title: The Principles --; title: Three Main Grounds For The Principles --; title: A Statement Of The Two Principles --; title: The Greatest Equal Liberty Principle --; title: The Difference Principle and The Equal Opportunity Principle --; title: The Ordering Of The Principles --; title: The Utilitarian Alternative --; title: Four Arguments against Utilitarianism; title: 3.; title: The Practicum of Justice --; title: Realizing the Principles: The Four-Stage Sequence --; title: Constitutional Questions --; title: The Problem of Toleration --; title: The Problem of Participation --; title: The Worth of Liberty --; title: Majority Rule --; title: Legislative Questions --; title: The Problem of the Social Minimum --; title: The Tendency to Equality --; title: Self-Respect --; title: Choice of Economic Regime --; title: Administrative Questions --; title: The Problem of Civil Disobedience -- -- 4.; title: The Theoretical Basis of Justice --; title: Justification of the Principles --; title: Reflective Equilibrium[ -- ]narrow And Wide --; title: The Right and the Good --; title: The Thin Theory Of The Good And The Aristotelian Principle --; title: The Priority Of The Right --; title: The Problem of Stability -- -- 5.; title: Objections and Responses --; title: The Libertarian Argument --; title: Desert --; title: Self-Ownership --; title: Private Property --; title: Response To The Libertarian Argument --; title: The Feminist Argument --; title: Response To The Feminist Argument --; title: The Communitarian Argument --; title: The Abstracted Self[ -- ]identity And Agency --; title: Community --; title: Response To The Communitarian Idea --; title: For Further Reading on A Theory of Justice; title: 1.; title: The Good in Political Liberalism --; title: Political Conception of the Good --; title: The Fact Of Pluralism --; title: Freestanding Views --; title: Freestanding Views As Political Conceptions -- -- 2.; title: The Justification of the Principles Reconsidered --; title: Political Constructionism --; title: Objectivity --; title: Method --; title: Reasonableness --; title: The Burdens of Judgment --; title: Reasonable Comprehensive Doctrines --; title: The Overlapping Consensus --; title: Public Reason -- -- 3.; title: The Right and Good Revisited: Stability for the Right Reasons -- -- 4.; title: Objections and Responses --; title: Do We Need Truth in Politics After All? --; title: Stability or Justification? --; title: Response to the Questions about Truth and Justification --; title: What Kind of Politics Does the Politic& Allow? --; title: How Public Is Public Reason? --; title: Response to Questions about Political Disagreement and Public Reason --; title: For Further Reading on Political Liberalism -- -- 1.; title: Ideal Theory[ -- ]An Analytic of International Justice --; title: Justice between Liberal Peoples --; title: Peoples Not States --; title: Realistic Utopias Revisited; title: The Law of Peoples for Liberal Societies --; title: The Second Original Position --; title: The Contractors as Representatives --; title: The Second Veil of Ignorance --; title: The Eight Principles --; title: The Problem of Stability and the Idea of Democratic Peace --; title: Toleration of Nonliberal Peoples --; title: Decent Peoples --; title: The Third Original Position -- -- 2.; title: The Practicum of International Justice --; title: Nonideal Theory --; title: Outlaw States And The Right To Wage War --; title: Burdened Societies And The Problem Of Distributive Justice -- -- 3.; title: Objections and Responses --; title: The Cosmopolitan Argument --; title: The Universalism Objection --; title: The Human Rights Objection --; title: The Distributive Justice Objection --; title: The Cultural Relativist Argument --; title: Response to the Cosmopolitan Argument and the Cultural Relativist Argument --; title: For Further Reading on The Law of Peoples.