In 1971 the philosophical world was waiting both literally and metaphorically for A Theory of Justice. Many philosophers eagerly anticipated it because John Rawls had already published key elements of his theory in a series of articles, and for several years he had circulated drafts of sections of the book. Just a year after its publication, one author began his review by stating that “Rawls' theory of justice is too well-known to need detailed exposition.” Metaphorically, the field of political philosophy was waiting for it because, in the words of Isaiah Berlin in 1964, “no commanding work of political philosophy has appeared in the twentieth century.” The field was looking for such a work in order to escape from what was widely believed to be its very poor condition. Perhaps the most dramatic expression of this despondent state was Peter Laslett's declaration, in the introduction to his 1956 collection Philosophy, Politics and Society, that “For the moment, anyway, political philosophy is dead.” This certainly overstated the case, but his identification of “the culprit” revealed clearly what he thought had gone wrong in the field: “The Logical Positivists did it.”

The work of T. D. Weldon was characteristic of this approach. In an article included in Laslett's 1956 collection, Weldon declared that “The purpose of philosophy…is to expose and elucidate linguistic muddles; it has done its job when it has revealed the confusions which have occurred and are likely to recur in inquiries into matters of fact because the structure and the use of language are what they are.”