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You hear that liberalism lacks an idea of the common good, but I think that's a mistake.

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
Thinking
Liberalism
Mistake
Hear
Common
Idea
Ideas
Good
Think
Lacks

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Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
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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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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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There are various ways you might define the common good, but that would be one way you could do it.
John Rawls
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Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.
John Rawls
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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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Citizens can have their own grounding in their comprehensive doctrines, whatever they happen to be.
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The good of political life is the good of free and equal citizens recognizing the duty of civility to one another and supporting the institutions of a constitutional regime.
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An injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice.
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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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The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
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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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The sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind.
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Religious faith is an important aspect of American culture and a fact of American political life.
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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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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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Public reason arguments can be good or bad just like other arguments.
John Rawls
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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.
John Rawls
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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.
John Rawls