ABSTRACT
What kind of a society would you choose to live in if you didn’t know the position you would occupy within it? John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice provides the principles for constructing a fair and just society by imagining a reasonable person’s response to this question. The book, first published in 1971, transformed political philosophy. It rejuvenated the social contract tradition established by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. Though a complex and in places rather dry book, it is one of the most widely read works of political philosophy of the twentieth century. Its most distinctive aspect is its use of the notion of the ‘original position’ to arrive at conclusions about fairness and justice and how we should achieve them in our social institutions.
