Book contents
- Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at 50
- Cambridge Philosophical Anniversaries
- Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at 50
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations of and Bibliographic Information for Rawls’s Works
- Introduction
- Part I Rawls and History
- 1 Taillight Illumination
- 2 The Theory Rawls, the 1844 Marx, and the Market
- 3 Rawls, Lerner, and the Tax-and-Spend Booby Trap
- 4 Rawls’s Principles of Justice as a Transcendence of Class Warfare
- 5 The Significance of Injustice
- Part II Developments between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism
- Part III Rawls, Ideal Theory, and the Persistence of Injustice
- Part IV Pluralism, Democracy, and the Future of Justice as Fairness
- References
- Index
2 - The Theory Rawls, the 1844 Marx, and the Market
from Part I - Rawls and History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 July 2023
- Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at 50
- Cambridge Philosophical Anniversaries
- Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at 50
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations of and Bibliographic Information for Rawls’s Works
- Introduction
- Part I Rawls and History
- 1 Taillight Illumination
- 2 The Theory Rawls, the 1844 Marx, and the Market
- 3 Rawls, Lerner, and the Tax-and-Spend Booby Trap
- 4 Rawls’s Principles of Justice as a Transcendence of Class Warfare
- 5 The Significance of Injustice
- Part II Developments between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism
- Part III Rawls, Ideal Theory, and the Persistence of Injustice
- Part IV Pluralism, Democracy, and the Future of Justice as Fairness
- References
- Index
Summary
In his work of 1844, Marx claims that human beings realize their nature through the joint activity of labor in a true communist society. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls calls the joint maintenance of a just society “the preeminent form of human flourishing. He says that “persons best express their nature” by maintaining just institutions. For both writers, what makes these joint activities central to the human good is the relationships they maintain among individuals who do not know of one another’s existence, relationships among distant unknowns. A necessary condition for these relationships to obtain is, in each case, a particular social ethos. If a standard left-wing critique of the market is cogent, and if the well-ordered society of Theory involves a widespread market, then the several elements in the desired social ethos of justice as fairness might be in tension with one another, might not be capable of being satisfied simultaneously. Rawls’s desired relationships might not obtain.
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- Information
- Rawls’s A Theory of Justice at 50 , pp. 36 - 59Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023