John Rawls certainly has his fair share of critics, but he's also widely considered to be the most influential political philosopher of the 20th century. As we heard in the Rawls episode, Rawls's theory of justice is a kind of contract theory wherein he lays out the basic principles of a democratic society. In the same sort of way that his thought experiment asks us to assess Continue Reading …
Is Rawls’ Difference Principle Egalitarian?
[From PEL Citizen and friend of the podcast Roy Spence] The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in the early 1970s led welfare economists to derive various interpretations of the Rawls’ second principle of justice, generally known as the “difference principle. By way of background, a primary objective of “welfare economics” is to provide a guide for Continue Reading …