Rawls' Theory of Justice

The concept of justice has been the focus of normative political theory over the past 50 years, and John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971) is widely seen as the most important attempt during that period to articulate a set of institutions and distributional outcomes that rational individuals would see as legitimate. Rawls’ seminal work has spawned a veritable critical industry since its publication (Miller, 1999). His elaboration of his project and restatement of his theory of “justice as fairness” (Rawls, 2001) promise to sustain interest in his ideas.

This essay is an attempt to critically discuss and analyze John Rawls’ (1921-2002) conception of justice. It seeks to also answer the question of what led him to perceive justice in the way that he did. In order to achieve this, a thorough introductory exposition of Rawls theory will be carried out citing its content with the use of relevant definitions and examples. A conclusion will then be drawn from the discourse.

This essay therefore recognizes that Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness is thus an egalitarian theory of moral conduct which applies to all the obligations which individuals have toward each other. It further perceives it as a deontological (that is, it is one which states that the moral content of an action is not wholly dependent on its consequences) rather than a teleological theory (that is, an approach to ethics that studies actions in relation to their ends or utility. Additionally, it conceptualizes it as an antithesis to utilitarian and perfectionist views of justice in order discover how applicable the theory is in the determination of the allocation of social, economic, and political resources.
Harvard philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) developed a conception of justice as fairness in his now classic work A Theory of Justice. Using elements of both Kantian and utilitarian philosophy, he has described a method for the moral evaluation of social and political institutions. According

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