March Pick | Selected by Dr Caleb Althorpe

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice

“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.”

This opening passage of Rawls's A Theory of Justice is what got me interested in political philosophy as an undergraduate.

Most regard A Theory of Justice as one of the most important works in political philosophy ever written. While this is an extraordinary claim – it is an extraordinary book. There is a certain grandness and completeness about it that is reminiscent of works like Plato's Republic or Hobbes's Leviathan, and it is at the same time both enormously ambitious in its aims while also being extremely careful and measured in its argument.

While the most famous aspect of the book is Part I, which contains Rawls’s two principles of justice and the choice circumstance from which these are derived, it is the relatively lesser-read Part III that is my favourite. It is here that Rawls engages with questions about how we can best reconcile individuality with community, the individual with society.

Rawls’s answer, I think, is to turn to human sociability – for us to fully develop and enjoy our own skills and capacities, we rely on the developed skills and talents of others. I am currently working on how this relatively simple thought ought to push Rawlsian-inspired liberal accounts of justice to more substantive demands in the world of work than what is usually thought.