Una teoria della giustizia

It took me a while to understand what this famous book was about - I am still far from up to speed with moral philosophy - but once I'd figured out where Rawls was heading it made good sense and was very illuminating. The central question, if I may practice my still unfluent moral philosophyspeak fo Leggi tutto

What strikes me most as a non-philosopher reading this book is what Rawls doesn’t talk about. Libertarian ideas, the staple of American political and social discourse, receive no attention as such in this book. To the extent that libertarianism factors in at all, Rawls dismisses it so peremptorily h Leggi tutto

I read this ... gosh, about fifteen years ago now. Something about it always bugged me. Rawls is trying to build on Kant's theory of ethics. Kant's thing was classic Enlightenment: trying to divorce morality from Christianity. Rawls' development is the veil of ignorance - essentially a social contra Leggi tutto

I’ll start with just a word of complaint. There is no reason at all why an intelligent person like John Rawls should write so badly. One does not expect Mark Twain, George Orwell or even J K Galbraith. However, Rawls could have put in some examples , so that the reader did not sink into a bog of abst Leggi tutto

So, first off: this is a work of academic philosophy. I think it's very readable and entertaining for a work of academic philosophy, but this is probably not a book to take to the beach. It also helps if you've had a basic course in philosophy, or have recently read a book like Michael Sandel's Just Leggi tutto

"In a fight, a liberal is the first one to leave the room".---" Big Bill" Haywood". I once knew a Yale Professor of Political Science who declared "John Rawls will still be taught when people like me have long been forgotten." A rare burst of academic modesty. A THEORY OF JUSTICE is the ne plus ultr Leggi tutto

In "A Theory of Justice", John Rawls presents a conception of justice which, as he puts it, generalises and carries to a higher level of abstraction the social contract theory. So, rather than dictating the exact form of government to be applied, the persons in the Rawls' original position would, in Leggi tutto

John Rawls presents the reader with a thought experiment based on the social contract, original position, and his very own "veil of ignorance." So this thought experiment is a hypothetical situation that is really just a very dull gambling scheme where the players must make decisions about the struc Leggi tutto

This book, assigned for Dave Schweickart's Social and Political Philosophy course, was far and away the most important book I read while studying philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. As usual, while only part of it was required for class, I read the whole of it. Rawls' book is important for, amon Leggi tutto