No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Extract
Arguably, there have been few contemporary political theorists who have had as great an impact as John Rawls. During his lifetime his work was referred to as “epoch-making” and “cataclysmic in its effect” on the field of political theory. On numerous occasions he was proclaimed “the most important political philosopher of the twentieth century,” and other titles equally celebratory. A number of individuals have gone so far as to credit Rawls with reviving political philosophy, breathing new life into what was (according to Peter Laslett's now famous 1956 declaration) a dead discipline, once again making it a valid and valuable enterprise. While the accuracy of such a claim has been questioned, one fact seems indisputable: Rawls redefined late twentieth-century political theory, altering its “premises and principles.” Indeed, “political philosophy since the early 1970s has been—at least in the English-speaking world—in very substantial part a commentary on Rawls's work.”
- Type
- Review Essay
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2008
References
1 Ben Rogers, “Portrait: John Rawls,” Prospect [http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ highlights/portrait_johnrawls/index.html]. Accessed 11 May 2000.
2 Victoria Davion and Clark Wolf, “Introduction: From Comprehensive Justice to Political Liberalism,” in Davion and Wolf, eds., The Idea of a Political Liberalism: Essays on Rawls (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 1.
3 Thomas Nagel, “Justice, Justice, Shalt Thou Pursue Justice,” The New Republic, 25 (October 1999): 36.
4 Amy Gutmann, “Communitarian Critics of Liberalism,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, 3 (1984): 308–22.
5 John Gray, Enlightenment's Wake: Politics and Culture at the Close of the Modern Age (New York: Routledge), 1.
6 It was (conservatively) estimated that by the year 2000 there were approximately 5000 books and articles that—to varying degrees—were devoted to an assessment of the arguments presented in A Theory of Justice (Harvard University Press, 1971). Rawls's subsequent publications would also generate an extremely impressive (if less phenomenal) response. See Ben Rogers, “Portrait: John Rawls,” Prospect [http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/highlights/portrait_johnrawls/index.html]. Accessed 11 May 2000.
7 A partial list of his interlocutors (in no particular order) includes H. L. A. Hart, Jürgen Habermas, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Rorty, Amartya Sen, Kenneth Arrow, Alasdair MacIntyre, Joseph Raz, Robert Nozick, Thomas Nagel, Brian Barry, Charles Taylor, Thomas Scanlon, Bruce Ackerman, G. A. Cohen, Joshua Cohen, David Gauthier, Judith Shklar, Thomas Pogge, Michael Sandel, Susan Moller Okin, Michael Walzer, William Galston, Benjamin Barber, Martha Nussbaum, Charles Larmore, Stephen Macedo, and Iris Marion Young.
8 Journal of Philosophy 92, 3 (1995): 109–80.
9 However, in a number of important respects, Illiberal Justice represents essentially a lengthier version of Schaefer's previous book Justice or Tyranny: A Critique of Rawls's “A Theory of Justice” (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1979).