John Rawls

John Rawls
Rawls in 1971
Born	John Bordley Rawls (1921-02-21)February 21, 1921 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
Died	November 24, 2002(2002-11-24) (aged 81) Lexington, Massachusetts, U.S.
Education	Princeton University (BA, PhD) Christ Church, Oxford
Notable work	A Theory of Justice (1971) Political Liberalism (1993)
Spouse	Margaret Warfield Fox ​ ​ (m. 1949)​
Awards	Rolf Schock Prize in Logic and Philosophy (1999) National Humanities Medal (1999)
Era	20th-century philosophy 21st-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy Social liberalism
Institutions	Princeton University Cornell University Harvard University
Thesis	A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge (1950)
Doctoral advisor	Walter Terence Stace
Doctoral students	Thomas Pogge, Thomas Nagel, Allan Gibbard, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Arnold Davidson, Onora O'Neill, Adrian Piper, Elizabeth S. Anderson, Christine Korsgaard, Susan Neiman, Sissela Bok, Hilary Bok, Claudia Card, David Lyons, Hannah Ginsborg, Michele Moody-Adams, T. M. Scanlon, Nancy Sherman, Barbara Herman, Joshua Cohen, Jean Elizabeth Hampton, Michael Stocker, Thomas E. Hill Jr., Henry S. Richardson, Gurcharan Das, Andreas Teuber, Samuel Freeman
Main interests	Political philosophy Social contract theory Democracy Political legitimacy Instrumental and value rationality
Notable ideas	Justice as fairness Original position Reflective equilibrium Overlapping consensus Property-owning democracy Public reason Liberal neutrality[1] Veil of ignorance Deliberative democracy Liberal socialism Primary goods Telishment
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John Bordley Rawls (/rɔːlz/;^[2] February 21, 1921 – November 24, 2002) was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the modern liberal tradition.^[3][4] Rawls has been described as one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century.^[5]

In 1990, Will Kymlicka wrote in his introduction to the field that "it is generally accepted that the recent rebirth of normative political philosophy began with the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971".^[6][7] Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society in any case where inequalities may occur. Rawls's argument for these principles of social justice uses a thought experiment called the "original position", in which people deliberately select what kind of society they would choose to live in if they did not know which social position they would personally occupy. In his later work Political Liberalism (1993), Rawls turned to the question of how political power could be made legitimate given reasonable disagreement about the nature of the good life.

Rawls received both the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999. The latter was presented by President Bill Clinton in recognition of how his works "revived the disciplines of political and ethical philosophy with his argument that a society in which the most fortunate help the least fortunate is not only a moral society but a logical one".^[8]

Among contemporary political philosophers, Rawls is frequently cited by the courts of law in the United States and Canada^[9] and referred to by practicing politicians in the United States and the United Kingdom. In a 2008 national survey of political theorists, based on 1,086 responses from professors at accredited, four-year colleges and universities in the United States, Rawls was voted first on the list of "Scholars Who Have Had the Greatest Impact on Political Theory in the Past 20 Years".^[10]