As Fair Justice: A New Theory of Justice

Author: John Rawls (USA)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-04-01
Features: A Theory of Justice - The basic idea is the conception of society as a fair system of cooperation across generations. We take this conception as the organizing core. The conception of social cooperation has at least three essential features:
(1) Social cooperation is guided by rules and procedures recognized by the public, and the people involved use these rules and procedures to appropriately regulate their behavior.
(2) The idea of fair cooperative terms: every participant can rationally accept them, and if everyone else accepts them equally, then every participant should accept them. Fair cooperative terms demonstrate the concepts of reciprocity and mutuality: everyone fulfills their duties as required by the publicly recognized rules and acquires benefits as stipulated by the standards agreed upon by the public.
(3) The idea of the reasonable interests or good of each participant. Common sense understands "rational" as a moral concept that includes a moral sense, while "reasonable" is not such a moral concept.