Justice as fairness : a restatement / John Rawls ; edited by Erin Kelly. [print]

Includes bibliographies and index.

Part I: Fundamental ideas

1. Four roles of political philosophy -- 2. Society as a fair system of cooperation -- 3. The idea of a well-ordered society -- 4. The idea of a basic structure -- 5. Limits to our inquiry -- 6. The idea of the original position -- 7. The idea of free and equal persons -- 8. Relations between the fundamental ideas -- 9. The idea of public justification -- 10. The idea of reflective equilibrium -- 11. The idea of an overlapping consensus.

Part II: Principles of justice

12. Three basic points -- 13. Two principles of justice -- 14. The problem of distributive justice -- 15. The basic structure as subject: First kind of reason -- 16. The basic structure as subject: Second kind of reason -- 17. Who are the least advantaged -- 18. The difference principle: It's meaning -- 19. Objections via counterexamples -- 20. Legitimate expectations, entitlement, and desert -- 21. On viewing native endowments as a common asset -- 22. Summary comments on distributive justice and desert.

Part III: The argument from the original position

23. The original position: The set-up -- 24. The circumstances of justice -- 25. Formal constraints and the veil of ignorance -- 26. The idea of public reason -- 27. The first fundamental comparison -- 28. The structure of the argument and the maximin rule -- 29. The argument stressing the third condition -- 30. The priority of the basic liberties -- 31. An objection about aversion to uncertainty -- 32. The equal basic liberties revisited -- 33. The argument stressing the third condition -- 34. Second fundamental comparison: Introduction -- 35. Grounds falling under publicity -- 36. Grounds falling under reciprocity -- 37. Grounds falling under stability -- 38. Grounds against the principle of restricted utility -- 39. Comments on equality -- 40. Concluding remarks.

Part IV: Institutions of a just basic structure

41. Property-owning democracy: Introductory remarks -- 42. Some basic contrasts between regimes -- 43. Ideas of the good in justice of fairness -- 44. Constitutional versus procedural democracy -- 45. The fair value of the equal political liberties -- 46. Denial of the fair value for other liberties -- 47. Political and comprehensive liberalism: a contrast. -- 48. A note on head taxes and the priority of liberty -- 49. Economic institutions of a property-owning democracy -- 50. The family as a basic institution -- 51. The flexibility of an index of primary goods -- 52. Addressing Marx's critique of liberalism -- 53. Brief comments on leisure time.

Part V. The question of stability

54. The domain of the political -- 55. The question of stability -- 56. Is justice as fairness political in the wrong way -- 57. How is political liberalism possible -- 58. An overlapping consensus not utopian -- 59. A reasonable moral psychology -- 60. The good of political society.

This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement of his theory of justice as fairness, revised in light of his more recent papers and his treatise Political Liberalism (1993). Rawls offers a broad overview of his main lines of thought and also explores specific issues never before addressed in any of his writings. He is well aware that since the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, American society has moved farther away from the idea of justice as fairness. Yet his ideas retain their power and relevance to debates in a pluralistic society about the meaning and theoretical viability of liberalism. This book demonstrates that moral clarity can be achieved even when a collective commitment to justice is uncertain.

Principles of Justice -- The Argument from the Original Position -- Institutions of a Just Basic Structure -- The Question of Stability.

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