ABSTRACT
The first half of the 20th century saw a remarkable decline in philosophical thinking about ethics and politics in the western world. Instead of philosophical debate about ethical and political values, the intellectual world was filled with ideological claims that were widely seen as lacking a rational basis. In the academies, doubts were expressed as to whether the subjects still existed. In this context the development and publication of Rawls’s theory of justice came to be seen as the moment when new life was breathed into these traditional forms. It is certainly the case that since then, there has been a massive increase in the amount of academic work in these fields.
