John Borden Rawls (1921–2002) was an American political and ethical philosopher. His books A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993) examine the primary institutions of a just society as those preferred by rational people under conditions, which ensure fairness.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Rawls studied at Princeton and taught at Princeton and Cornell before an appointment as a Harvard professor (1962.)
Rawls’s best-known work is A Theory of Justice (1971,) which has been widely reviewed in social and political philosophy and gave this field a new direction and energy. He presented a fully refined description of the theoretical principles of his theory of justice, its implications in detail for social institutions, and its grounding and support in moral psychology.
Rawls’s later works include Justice as Fairness (1991,) Political Liberalism (1993,) The Law of Peoples (1999,) and Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001.)
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In everyday life the exchange of opinion with others checks our partiality and widens our perspective; we are made to see things from the standpoint of others and the limits of our vision are brought home to us.
—John Rawls
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