Abstract
John Rawls (1921-2002) was a major political philosopher of the twentieth century. He occupied several teaching positions in Harvard, Princeton, Cornell and Oxford universities. In 1971, he published his most famous work - 'A Theory of Justice'. As one of the most commented and ambitious books of social philosophy of the second part of the twentieth century, it aims to show the principles of social justice and why they can only be guaranteed in a liberal society which partly redistributes wealth and income for the benefit of the less advantaged of the society. The 'Rawls-event' illustrates what Michel Foucault calls 'returns of subject knowledge' as Rawls claims to follow the Kantian tradition and aims to use the social contract theories against the dominant doctrine of his analytical field: utilitarianism.
The goal is twofold. On one hand, justice as fairness proposes to conciliate the modern notion of freedom, as it is defined by political liberalism, and the requirement of equality. On the other hand, it's necessary to define principles which would be independent enough from any 'comprehensive' philosophical doctrine, in order to figure out the pluralism of democratic societies. Justice is the first virtue of a social institution, just as truth is for a system of thought. The former, indeed, deals with the problem of the distribution of obligations and benefits created by social cooperation, acknowledging that life within a society creates mutual advantages for its participants as well as conflicts concerning the repartition of these benefits. A public conception of justice has for its basic postulate that idividuals have personal interests but that they also acknowledge the necessity for them to reach an agreement both on their respective duties and rights and on the distribution of common advantages. The conception of justice which is adopted affects the good coordination, the efficiency and stability of social life. Firstly, it is possible to admit that a given conception of justice is superior to another one when its adjunct consequences are preferable.
