John Rawls: Reticent Socialist

This book is the first detailed reconstruction of the late work of John Rawls. It focuses on Rawls's presentation of two regime types capable of realizing 'justice-as-fairness': property-owning democracy and liberal socialism. Long mistaken as an apologist for welfare-state capitalism, Rawls emerges here as an understated advocate of socialism.

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This book is the first detailed reconstruction of the late work of John Rawls, who was perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century. Rawls's 1971 treatise, A Theory of Justice, stimulated an outpouring of commentary on 'justice-as-fairness,' his conception of justice for an ideal, self-contained, modern political society. Most of that commentary took Rawls to be defending welfare-state capitalism as found in Western Europe and the United States. Far less attention has been given to Rawls's 2001 book, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement. In the Restatement, Rawls not only substantially reformulates the 'original position' argument for the two principles of justice-as-fairness but also repudiates capitalist regimes as possible embodiments. Edmundson further develops Rawls's non-ideal theory, which guides us when we find ourselves in a society that falls well short of justice.