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The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

John Rawls

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John Rawls
Age: 81 †
Born: 1921
Born: February 21
Died: 2002
Died: November 24
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Political Scientist
University Teacher
Baltimore
Maryland
Rawls
John Bordley Rawls
Ignorance
Behinds
Behind
Principles
Justice
Veil
Veils
Chosen

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A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.
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Now the good of political life is a great political good. It is not a secular good specified by a comprehensive doctrine like those of Kant or Mill. You could characterize this political good as the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another: the duty to give citizens public reasons for one's political actions.
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[E]ach person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.
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If you compare the United States with Europe, my view is that what happened in Europe is that the church became deeply distrusted by people, because it sided with the monarchs. It instituted the Inquisition and became part of the repressive state apparatus. That never happened here. We don't have that history.
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There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions.
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Different political views, even if they're all liberal, in the sense of supporting liberal constitutional democracy, undoubtedly have some notion of the common good in the form of the means provided to assure that people can make use of their liberties, and the like.
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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.
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The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders, as persons who seek the advantages of just institutions while not doing their share to uphold them.
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Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.
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Justice as fairness provides what we want.
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An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.
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There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.
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We must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose for themselves if they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally.
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Liberal constitutional democracy is supposed to ensure that each citizen is free and equal and protected by basic rights and liberties.
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Many of our most serious conflicts are conflicts within ourselves. Those who suppose their judgements are always consistent are unreflective or dogmatic.
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A political conception just applies to the basic structure of a society, its institutions, constitutional essentials, matters of basic justice and property, and so on.
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There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.
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The fundamental criterion for judging any procedure is the justice of its likely results.
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A political conception covers the right to vote, the political virtues, and the good of political life, but it doesn't intend to cover anything else.
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The idea of public reason has to do with how questions should be decided, but it doesn't tell you what are the good reasons or correct decisions.
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