SOCIAL CONTRACT

Social Contract

Social Contract

Introduction

In 1972, the publication of John Rawls' extremely influential A Theory of Justice brought moral and political philosophy back from what had been a long hiatus of philosophical consideration. Rawls' theory relies on a Kantian understanding of persons and their capacities. For Rawls, as for Kant, persons have the capacity to reason from a universal point of view, which in turn means that they have the particular moral capacity of judging principles from an impartial standpoint.(Gauthier, 1990)

Discussion

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls argues that the moral and political point of view is discovered via impartiality. (It ...