John Rawls: Justice as Fairness
What can we do?
What do we have ?
Why is it so hard to change?
What would we want?
- Be aware
- Stay positive
- Affect Change
- Good schools
- Access to medical care
- Fair access to the law and representative government
- Adequate housing for all.
Political Theory
- Rawls was accutely aware of the social injustices faced by a large majority of people.
- He wanted to find a way to get more people to understand this vast unfairness so he created what he called the "Veil of ignorance."
Academics
Military Service
- Served in WWII
- Witnessed "Horrors of War"
- Demoted for refusing to punish a subordinate because he didn't feel it was just.
- Attened Princeton in 1946
- Earned Phd in 1950
- Attended oxford in 1952
- In 1962 he returned to the US and quickly became a professor at Harvard where he taught for nearly 40 years
Early Life
- Born in Baltimore in 1921
- Brothers died at an early age
- Witnessed social injustice