John Rawls at 100

John Rawls was born 100 years ago today. (And A Theory of Justice was published 50 years ago this year.)

 

I only saw Rawls once. It was at his 1993 Amnesty Lecture where he presented the initial version of his “The Law of Peoples” (later expanded into the 1999 book). I remember being quite unimpressed at the time (ah, youthful arrogance!).

 

Years later, when I started working on my dissertation, I was determined to refute Rawls’s “political liberalism,” and especially the idea of “public reason.” However, I thought it best to present the strongest possible version of Rawls’s views before “demolishing” them. Two years later I finished up a dissertation defending Rawlsian political liberalism. Careful consideration of his arguments had convinced me that he was right after all, despite my initial opposition.

 

I’ve been something of a “Rawls plumber” ever since…

 

As a matter of academic genealogy, Rawls is my “grandfather,” as he was the advisor of Elizabeth Anderson, who was my PhD co-advisor at the University of Michigan. (Perhaps surprisingly, I turned out to be far more of a “Rawlsian” than Anderson.)

 

The Boston Review has some articles on Rawls available here. I haven’t read them all, but I recommend the ones by Joshua Cohen, Martin O’Neill, and Thad Williamson.