John Rawls (born on February 21, 1921 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA) is a philosopher of the United States are well known in the 20th century in the field of philosophy politik.Bukunya entitled "Theory of Justice" (in English A Theory of Justice ) is one of the primary texts in political philosophy. Rawls studied at Princeton University, and taught at Cornell University and Harvard University.


Thought

John Rawls is known as a philosopher who strongly criticized the free market economy. For him the free market provides the freedom for everyone, but with the free market it is difficult to uphold justice. Because of this, he developed a theory called the theory of justice yag. According to Rawls, the most fundamental principles of justice is that everyone has an equal right of their positions wajar.Karena, so that justice can be achieved then the constitutional structure of the political, economic, and regulation of property rights must be equal for all orang.Situasi This is called "fog of ignorance" (veil of ignorance), in which every person should override the attributes that distinguish it from other people, such as the ability, wealth, social position, religious and philosophical views, and conceptions of value.


To confirm the situation needs to be guaranteed fair terhadp some basic rights that apply to all, such as freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of association, political freedom, and freedom in the eyes of the law.


Basically, the theory of justice Rawls wanted to address two things, namely utilitarianism and resolve the controversy about the dilemma between liberty (freedom) and equality (equality), which is considered impossible to put together. Rawls explicitly positioned to deal with the utilitarian theory, which since the mid-19th century dominated the thinking moralitaspolitik normative liberalism.



Important works

In 1971, John Rawls published a book called A Theory of Justice (Theory of Justice). Idea in this book is packed a concept that says Rawls as the concept of justice as fairness (justice as a fairness). According to Robert Nozick, A Theory of Justice is a work of political philosophy and moral philosophy of a strong, deep, subtle, widespread, systematic, which is never seen in the works of other German philosophers .. After the book A Theory of Justice was published, it again appears a new book written by Rawls's Political Liberalism entitled (Political Liberalism). This book is a guide book to explain the idea of ​​justice as fairness.