John Rawls and the Task of Political Philosophy

In this article, I sketch a reading of Rawlsʹs work that ties together many of the features that distinguish it from the work of other authors commemorated in this issue. On this reading, the two world wars and the Holocaust pressed the question of whether a just liberal democracy is possible. Seeking to defend reasonable faith in that possibility, Rawls developed a theory of justice for an ideally just liberal democracy. He argued that such a society is a "real possibility" because, given reasonable psychological assumptions, the basic institutions of a just society would engender the moral support of its citizens. In doing so, Rawls challenged alternative accounts of moral motivation that enjoyed some currency in the analytic philosophy of the time. The interpretation of Rawlsʹs work defended here therefore locates him in the philosophical as well as the political history of the twentieth century.