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. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

In this innovative and important work, Gerald Gaus advances a revised and more realistic account of public reason liberalism, showing how, in the midst of fundamental disagreement about values and moral beliefs, we can achieve a moral and political order that treats all as free and equal moral persons. The first part of this work analyzes social morality as a system of authoritative moral rules. Drawing on an earlier generation of moral philosophers such as Kurt Baier and Peter Strawson as (...) well as current work in the social sciences, Gaus argues that our social morality is an evolved social fact, which is the necessary foundation of a mutually beneficial social order. The second part considers how this system of social moral authority can be justified to all moral persons. Drawing on the tools of game theory, social choice theory, experimental psychology and evolutionary theory, Gaus shows how a free society can secure a moral equilibrium that is endorsed by all, and how a just state respects, and develops, such an equilibrium. (shrink)

This book continues and revises the ideas of justice as fairness that John Rawls presented in _A Theory of Justice_ but changes its philosophical interpretation in a fundamental way. That previous work assumed what Rawls calls a "well-ordered society," one that is stable and relatively homogenous in its basic moral beliefs and in which there is broad agreement about what constitutes the good life. Yet in modern democratic society a plurality of incompatible and irreconcilable doctrines--religious, philosophical, and moral--coexist within the (...) framework of democratic institutions. Recognizing this as a permanent condition of democracy, Rawls asks how a stable and just society of free and equal citizens can live in concord when divided by reasonable but incompatible doctrines? This edition includes the essay "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited," which outlines Rawls ' plans to revise _Political Liberalism,_ which were cut short by his death. "An extraordinary well-reasoned commentary on _A Theory of Justice_...a decisive turn towards political philosophy." --_Times Literary Supplement_. (shrink)

Liberalism without Perfection offers an introduction to the debate between liberal perfectionism and political liberalism. This book is a new account and defence of Rawlsian political liberalism, one of the most discussed, but widely misunderstood and criticized theories in contemporary political theory.

Some of these essays articulate views of justice and liberalism distinct from those found in the two books.

In this, his most influential work, legal theorist and political philosopher Carl Schmitt argues that liberalism's basis in individual rights cannot provide a reasonable justification for sacrificing oneself for the state. This edition of the 1932 work includes the translator's introduction which highlights Schmitt's intellectual journey through the turbulent period of German history leading to the Hitlerian one-party state. It also includes Leo Strauss's analysis of Schmitt's thesis and a foreword by Tracy B. Strong placing Schmitt's work into contemporary context.

In this essay I deal with two conceptions of the political—one that entails a clash of civilizations associated with an Schmittian critique of liberalism, and a second that envisions the political as an emerging domain in relationship to the idea of overlapping consensus. The discovery of the emerging domain of the political in the later work of John Rawls separates the comprehensive from the political in a way that breaks the link between modernization and secularization. In so doing Rawls accommodates (...) the rise of religion that has become a major issue in the twenty-first century. I follow Rawls's development from…. (shrink)

This article focuses on the problem of political legitimacy: first, by finding it to be the driving force in the Rawlsian paradigm moving from a focus on the moral to one on the political; second, with the help of a consideration of multiple-modernities theory, by arguing for a version of political liberalism freed of its western framework; and third, by applying that framework to current debates over the meaning of democracy in a Confucian context.

This article analyses the notion of the ‘the people’ in contemporary political theory. It explains that the people's authority is considered to confer legitimacy upon constitutions, new regimes, and changes to the borders of states. It discusses the attribution of ultimate political authority to the people and investigates how the people came to have an authoritative status. It also analyses whether the repository of the ultimate political authority is a collective entity, a collection of individuals, or both.