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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.

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
Religion
Even
Tolerable
Injustice
Avoid
Morality
Necessary
Greater

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A society regulated by a public sense of justice is inherently stable.
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A scheme is unjust when the higher expectations, one or more of them, are excessive. If these expectations were decreased, the situation of the less favored would be improved.
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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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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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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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No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
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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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Of course, we know that not everyone agrees with assisted suicide, but people might agree that one has the right to it, even if they're not themselves going to exercise it.
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Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.
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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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The idea of public reason isn't about the right answers to all these questions, but about the kinds of reasons that they ought to be answered by.
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The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.
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An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.
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When the basic structure of society is publicly known to satisfy its principles for an extended period of time, those subject to these arrangements tend to develop a desire to act in accordance with these principles and to do their part in institutions which exemplify them
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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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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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Religious faith is an important aspect of American culture and a fact of American political life.
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The fairest rules are those to which everyone would agree if they did not know how much power they would have.
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