Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition--justice as fairness--and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the (...) social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. (shrink)

In this book R. G. Peffer tackles the challenges of finding in Marx's work an implicit moral theory, of answering claims that Marxism is incompatible with morality, and of developing the outlines of an adequate Marxist moral and social ...

This article responds to Philippe Mengue's claim that Deleuzian political philosophy is fundamentally hostile to democracy. After outlining key elements of the attitude towards democracy in Deleuze and Guattari's work, it addresses three major arguments put forward in support of this claim. The first relies on Deleuze's rejection of transcendence and his critical remarks about human rights; the second relies on the contrast between majoritarian and minoritarian politics outlined in A Thousand Plateaus; and the third relies on the antipathy of (...) philosophy towards opinion as outlined in What is Philosophy? After responding to each of these arguments in turn, I outline an alternative and more positive account of Deleuze and Guattari's critical engagement with opinion by way of a contrast with Rawls. (shrink)