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At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.

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
Choices
Satisfy
Individual
Rational
Best
Individuals
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Decisions
Supposed
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Consider
Economists
Principles
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Economist

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Justice as fairness provides what we want.
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Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.
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The question is, we have a particular problem. How many religions are there in the United States? How are they going to get on together? One way, which has been the usual way historically, is to fight it out, as in France in the sixteenth century. That's a possibility.
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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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Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
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An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty... A person's right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself.
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Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
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Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples.
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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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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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The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.
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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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