A Theory of Justice

⚖The case for it

Design a society without knowing which person in it you will be. The veil of ignorance does its work before the argument starts, and readers reach for it in real arguments about inequality and policy years after finishing, one calling the whole book “one of the all time greats.” Rawls grounds fairness in something other than aggregate welfare, which gives you a usable alternative to utilitarian reasoning rather than an objection to it. The two principles, liberty first and then the difference principle, arrive as a teachable system, though readers warn “you cannot get by reading just part of it.” One reviewer is candid about the climb: “it took me a while to understand what this famous book was about,” though others say the first hundred pages reorganize how they evaluate anything afterward. Careful where political philosophy is usually polemical.

— the honest librarian

✕The case against

Dense, abstract sentences draw the sharpest complaints, a “bog of abstract nouns,” and one reader flatly puzzled why “an intelligent person like John Rawls should write so badly.” Six hundred pages that readers think “could compress 560 pages to 300.” Part Three, on moral psychology, is the section people cop to skipping. Critics argue the veil smuggles self-interest in, so once you lift it the theory “reverts to might makes right.” The libertarian objection gets a quick pass, the system of natural liberty sketched and shelved inside a dozen pages, and communitarian, Marxist and feminist readers all flag the same abstraction away from community, economy and household.

— the honest librarian

12h

honest hours

17

sittings