One imperfect way to tell how much influence a book is having on people's thinking is to look at how often it's cited in other books and articles. Citations might not translate directly into what people are thinking, but a frequently cited book is much more likely to be influential than one that's seldom cited at all.
Since its publication 47 years ago, John Rawls' A Theory of Justice has been cited well over 80,000 times. That averages out to about five mentions a day in other books and articles. And it's popularity is growing. In recent years, it has been cited more than 12 times as often as it was cited in its first decade.
Beyond crude stats, A Theory of Justice has come to be widely regarded as one of the most important books in political philosophy and ethics since John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Marx. It provides a notion of how to organize society that is an alternative to utilitarianism, right-wing libertarianism, and communism -- among other ideologies. And its influence only seems to be growing.
The Deep, Deep Background
You can skip this part of the OP if you're in a hurry, but I think that to really understand the significance of Rawls, we should take a brief glance at human nature and the historical rise of our modern societies.
According to some very recent science, humanity is about 300,000 years old. For about the first 290,000 years, almost everyone lived in small, roaming bands that were fiercely egalitarian. The leaders had no power to coerce people into obeying them. They led only by the authority granted to them by their followers -- and not by force.
Then some fool invented agriculture.
In a nutshell, agriculture eventually made it possible for societies to grow larger -- much larger -- and for them to divide into a ruling class of elites and a follower class of non-elites. That's when all hell broke lose in paradise. Before then, the resources of the society were more or less equally distributed among the members of the society. But now -- with the rise of the elites -- the resources became unequally distributed. The newly minted rulers got most of the wealth, the followers got the leftover crumbs.
As a consequence, much of human history ever since has been a (often masked) tale of class conflict. Lots of people have died in the conflict. During one 1000 year period of European history, there was a serious peasant revolt on the average of at least one revolt each year.in one place or another. All of them -- every last one -- was crushed by the superior military power of the elites.
In response, a number of thinkers have proposed -- with varying degrees of success -- new and different ways to distribute the wealth of our societies. Adam Smith's capitalism and Karl Marx's communism are perhaps the two most famous proposals. John Rawls' theory of justice might someday be just as famous.
Rawls' Theory of Justice
Rawls does not approach the question of how a society's wealth and benefits should be distributed in quite the same way as Smith and Marx did.
Instead, Rawls proposes certain ethical and political principles which he believes would -- if implemented -- bring about a just and fair distribution of a society's goods and benefits -- including such benefits as personal liberty and political power.
To be sure, his principles would seem most compatible with current Western liberal democracies, rather than, say, with current communist regimes, or with the authoritarian capitalism that was so popular in such places as South America during the last century (and the memory of which, even to this day, gives right wing libertarian billionaires wet dreams).
The Greatest Equal Liberty Principle
The first principle, which has been named "The Greatest Equal Liberty Principle", essentially states that the members of a society should be given the greatest amount of liberty possible, limited only in that the liberty of any one member must not infringe upon that of any other member.
In practice, Rawls believes this would mean that members had certain rights, including a right to vote, a right to hold political office, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of conscience, freedom of personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest -- among other rights.
The Difference Principle
The second principle states that social and economic inequalities are to be allowed only if the worst off people in a society can be made better off with such inequalities than they would be under an equal distribution of the society's goods and benefits.
The principle provides a justification for using taxes and other means to redistribute the goods and benefits of a society from the better off to the worse off in order to accomplish such things as eliminating poverty or social inequality (think, perhaps, of erasing the effects of racism).
The Just Savings Principle
To Rawls, the Just Savings Principle is a part of the Difference Principle. However, I'm treating it separately here for ease of reference. Basically, the principle states that a fair share of a society's resources should be saved for future generations. For instance, you don't get to poison the water supply with radioactive waste for the next ten thousand years.
The Equal Opportunity Principle
Another principle that Rawls believes is part of the Difference Principle is the Equal Opportunity Principle. As Rawls puts it, public "offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity". The principle implies that public offices should be held on the basis of merit, rather than, say, ancestral rights or personal wealth.
My Biggie Criticism of Rawls
Some folks think Rawls' Difference Principle would justify such things as universal health care, free college tuition, and such. But I don't think it does. Those are things I happen to like, so I think Rawls might be in need of some additional principle -- or perhaps a revision of the Difference Principle -- to accommodate my whims.
For Further Information
I have left out tons and tons of stuff. Tons of stuff. For more information, see:
John Rawls (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Questions? Comments?
Since its publication 47 years ago, John Rawls' A Theory of Justice has been cited well over 80,000 times. That averages out to about five mentions a day in other books and articles. And it's popularity is growing. In recent years, it has been cited more than 12 times as often as it was cited in its first decade.
Beyond crude stats, A Theory of Justice has come to be widely regarded as one of the most important books in political philosophy and ethics since John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant, and Karl Marx. It provides a notion of how to organize society that is an alternative to utilitarianism, right-wing libertarianism, and communism -- among other ideologies. And its influence only seems to be growing.
The Deep, Deep Background
You can skip this part of the OP if you're in a hurry, but I think that to really understand the significance of Rawls, we should take a brief glance at human nature and the historical rise of our modern societies.
According to some very recent science, humanity is about 300,000 years old. For about the first 290,000 years, almost everyone lived in small, roaming bands that were fiercely egalitarian. The leaders had no power to coerce people into obeying them. They led only by the authority granted to them by their followers -- and not by force.
Then some fool invented agriculture.
In a nutshell, agriculture eventually made it possible for societies to grow larger -- much larger -- and for them to divide into a ruling class of elites and a follower class of non-elites. That's when all hell broke lose in paradise. Before then, the resources of the society were more or less equally distributed among the members of the society. But now -- with the rise of the elites -- the resources became unequally distributed. The newly minted rulers got most of the wealth, the followers got the leftover crumbs.
As a consequence, much of human history ever since has been a (often masked) tale of class conflict. Lots of people have died in the conflict. During one 1000 year period of European history, there was a serious peasant revolt on the average of at least one revolt each year.in one place or another. All of them -- every last one -- was crushed by the superior military power of the elites.
In response, a number of thinkers have proposed -- with varying degrees of success -- new and different ways to distribute the wealth of our societies. Adam Smith's capitalism and Karl Marx's communism are perhaps the two most famous proposals. John Rawls' theory of justice might someday be just as famous.
Rawls' Theory of Justice
Rawls does not approach the question of how a society's wealth and benefits should be distributed in quite the same way as Smith and Marx did.
Instead, Rawls proposes certain ethical and political principles which he believes would -- if implemented -- bring about a just and fair distribution of a society's goods and benefits -- including such benefits as personal liberty and political power.
To be sure, his principles would seem most compatible with current Western liberal democracies, rather than, say, with current communist regimes, or with the authoritarian capitalism that was so popular in such places as South America during the last century (and the memory of which, even to this day, gives right wing libertarian billionaires wet dreams).
The Greatest Equal Liberty Principle
The first principle, which has been named "The Greatest Equal Liberty Principle", essentially states that the members of a society should be given the greatest amount of liberty possible, limited only in that the liberty of any one member must not infringe upon that of any other member.
In practice, Rawls believes this would mean that members had certain rights, including a right to vote, a right to hold political office, freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of conscience, freedom of personal property, and freedom from arbitrary arrest -- among other rights.
The Difference Principle
The second principle states that social and economic inequalities are to be allowed only if the worst off people in a society can be made better off with such inequalities than they would be under an equal distribution of the society's goods and benefits.
The principle provides a justification for using taxes and other means to redistribute the goods and benefits of a society from the better off to the worse off in order to accomplish such things as eliminating poverty or social inequality (think, perhaps, of erasing the effects of racism).
The Just Savings Principle
To Rawls, the Just Savings Principle is a part of the Difference Principle. However, I'm treating it separately here for ease of reference. Basically, the principle states that a fair share of a society's resources should be saved for future generations. For instance, you don't get to poison the water supply with radioactive waste for the next ten thousand years.
The Equal Opportunity Principle
Another principle that Rawls believes is part of the Difference Principle is the Equal Opportunity Principle. As Rawls puts it, public "offices and positions must be open to everyone under conditions of fair equality of opportunity". The principle implies that public offices should be held on the basis of merit, rather than, say, ancestral rights or personal wealth.
My Biggie Criticism of Rawls
Some folks think Rawls' Difference Principle would justify such things as universal health care, free college tuition, and such. But I don't think it does. Those are things I happen to like, so I think Rawls might be in need of some additional principle -- or perhaps a revision of the Difference Principle -- to accommodate my whims.
For Further Information
I have left out tons and tons of stuff. Tons of stuff. For more information, see:
John Rawls (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Questions? Comments?