Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

AnsrRAcr. This is a critical analysis of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Rawls offers a theoretical justihcation of social democratic principles of justice. He argues that they are the principles which rational men would choose, under defined constraints, in an original position of social contract. The author criticises Rawls’s assumption that men of any background, of any socialisation, would choose these principles in the original position. He argues that the choice which Rawls imputes to his contractors reflects a specific (...) socialisation — one dominant in Western democracies. The theory is useful because it systematises a particular sense of justice ; it is in no sense however a universal theory. (shrink)