The Central Role of Rawl’s Theory

When John Rawls began writing A Theory of Justice in the 1950s, philosophers were busy lamenting the death of political philosophy. Grand political theories, Bernard Crick observed, were treated like “corpses for students to practice dissection upon.” Some philosophers, calling themselves “emotivists,” elaborated versions of the view that morality is just a matter of opinion. If any systematic view could claim adherents in the academy, it was utilitarianism, which asserted the seemingly simple principle, “maximize social welfare.” Utilitarianism was also extremely influential outside the academy. It seemed to provide a straightforward and rigorous method by which public officials could solve hard political problems: for every policy alternative, add up the social benefits, subtract the social costs, and implement the alternative that maximizes net benefits.

The common intuition that the rights of individuals should not be sacrificed ...