For all its flaws, the most important American contribution to political philosophy in the 20th century.

Learn about the veil of ignorance.

I haven't read past the intro, but boy what an intro. The great modern work on distributive justice. ( )

Original, clearly articulated, carefully thought out. The best concept of Justice I've ever read. ( )

A Theory of Justice comes in at just over 600 pages (including index), and let’s admit it--it is BORING. It is essentially an expanded version of Rawls's earlier paper entitled “Justice as Fairness" and, as such, is an example of how sheer physical weight in the world of academic ideas can often be a factor in the subsequent influence of those ideas. Yes, it’s central claim is interesting and somewhat original--a set of laws and institutions is just, in so far as it is that set that would be chosen by disinterested actors behind a “veil of ignorance" regarding the particularities of their own situations. Rawls’s Theory therefore deserves a hearing in any broad discussion of diverse political philosophies. In my opinion, however, the theory is if not exactly self-refuting, then at least quite dodgy in that it asks us to accept a moral theory arrived at as a result of a decision process where it is stipulated before hand that the moral beliefs held by actual particular individuals are in some sense “arbitrary." Indeed, though Rawls again and again invokes the concepts of personal autonomy and dignity and of the value of maximizing the ability to satisfy one’s own long-term goals and desires, his theory undermines these by assuming that virtually every personal characteristic is “arbitrary from the moral point of view." (See Nozick on this point.) One could also quibble with the fact that when the alleged concrete social and political consequences of the theory are presented they come to (surprise!) an endorsement of the welfare state beloved by liberal Harvard professors like John Rawls. Actually, there are many classical liberals and libertarians who, while being sympathetic to the basic philosophical claims of A Theory Of Justice, do not believe that the truth of these claims implies a statist solution. Whether it does or not is an empirical issue which I do not think the late philosophy professor was really equipped to handle. ( )