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Discussion Review: Justice, Theory, and a Theory of Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Marcus G. Singer
Marcus G. Singer*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

John Rawls's A Theory of Justice was published in December 1971 and has already established itself as a landmark. No other philosophical work, in our time or before, has, to my knowledge, excited so much attention in so short a time and in such varied circles. Clearly the book answers to a set of needs that have just recently surfaced, and it was published at just the right time to benefit from changing directions in philosophy and other areas of intellectual life brought on by enormous and accelerating changes in social conditions and concerns, by the disaster of Vietnam, and by the sense that something serious and sufficient must be done to counter the increasing fragmentation of knowledge and the divorce of science from society. Rawls gives one the sense of putting it all together; of seeing things clearly and seeing them whole; of joining together again economics, jurisprudence, and social and moral theory; and of putting philosophy to work once again in the service of society and humanity. In particular, he gives one the sense that there can be a science of justice, of morality, and of values.

Type
Special Section on Value Issues in Science, Technology, and Medicine
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1977 , pp. 594 - 618
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

†

A review of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1971. All further page references not otherwise specified are to this book.

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