A short, CRITICAL History of Philosophy (Chapter 30)
What Should We Think of John Rawls' Ethical Philosophy
A contrast to Eric Hoffer’s studied realism may be found in John Rawls, the American philosopher whom the academy has most taken into its bosom. Much of modern philosophy is easy to lampoon. Derrida, for instance, invites caricature. In considering Rawls, we must avoid this. His philosophical approach is novel and perhaps not insignificant.
A victim of the terrible misfortune of seeing two of his four brothers fall to childhood diseases, Rawls lived nearly the whole of his life with the guilt of knowing that he had exposed each to the ailment that killed him. Obviously, it is impossible to say if this was the source of his interest in ethics. What we can say is that it became his main interest and great passion.
The first of the writings to awaken his focus on the subject was Marx’s essay “On The Jewish Question.” That notoriously anti-semitic article equates Jews with money-lending and capitalism and denounces both. Yet Rawls curried to its underlying message: unequal distribution of income and wealth was unjust and must be remedied through state action. In A Theory of Justice, he responds to this problem by proposing what he calls a thought question. This revolves around what he termed the “original position.”
John Rawls: Did he blame himself for the deaths of two of his siblings?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Jonathan’s Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.