John Rawls is a prominent 20th century philosopher. While his work is well respected, it is also a great source of controversy. Much of this controversy is rooted in the fact that his work has forced those in the areas of moral and political philosophy to pay attention.
I was first introduced to Rawls my senior year at the University of Utah. My first reaction was one of confusion and frustration. It is tough reading. That semester, I read both A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993). The later work on political liberalism reached out to me at first, partially because it was a bit friendlier read, but primarily because of Rawls argument that reasonable comprehensive doctrines (religious or philosophical worldviews) could accept liberal democratic principles of justice as the basis for a constitutional regime.
Rawls argues that his principles, known of justice as fairness, could represent the type of principles that reasonable world views could accept as part of an overlapping consensus. Rawls’ principles of justice are as follows:
1. Equality of basic liberties (a full range of basic civil and political liberties similar to those found in the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments of the US Constitution).
2a. Offices are open to all (equal opportunity).
2b. Economic arrangements must benefit all with the only acceptable inequalities of wealth be those that most benefit the least well off (this is known as the difference principle). This principle ultimately calls for and requires a radical for of economic and social equality.
Now I will be delving into these principles in more detail in future posts, but I was struck a decade ago with how closely LDS principles of agency and economic equality. In many ways, Rawls seeks to show that equality and liberty are not in opposition with each other, but they actually go together hand and hand. Continue reading “The Mormon Rawls Project: Introduction”