ABSTRACT
The problems of social and political philosophy are of particular interest to many educators and policymakers. Since the days of Socrates, philosophers have been concerned with the concept of justice, and different views of justice give rise to different views on matters central to education, such as equality and equity. John Rawls builds his theory of justice on a strategy he calls "the original position". In the original position, all participants are fully rational persons, but they have no idea what their actual positions in society will be. Rawls and Immanuel Kant depend too exclusively on rationality and the procedures that grow out of purely logical processes. Although utilitarian thinking differs from Kantianism in positing the priority of the good over the right, it resembles Kantianism in the feature criticized by communitarians. It, too, strips persons of their identifiable social characteristics and reduces them to utilities.
