Justice as Fairness

< p> This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement of his theory of justice as fairness, revised in light of his more recent papers and his treatise < i> Political Liberalism< /i> (1993). As Rawls writes in the preface, the restatement presents "in one place an account of justice as fairness as I now see it, drawing on all my previous] works." He offers a broad overview of his main lines of thought and also explores specific issues never before addressed in any of his writings. < /p> < P> Rawls is well aware that since the publication of < i> A Theory of Justice< /i> in 1971, American society has moved farther away from the idea of justice as fairness. Yet his ideas retain their power and relevance to debates in a pluralistic society about the meaning and theoretical viability of liberalism. This book demonstrates that moral clarity can be achieved even when a collective commitment to justice is uncertain. < /p>