What a body of work this is, and what an accomplishment.Collected Papers affords an opportunity to step back and see [Rawls's] work as a whole, as the elaboration of a single powerful and abiding idea . . . The other thing these papers show--and for this we should be grateful to Freeman's persistence in having them republished--is how hard-won Rawls's achievement has been . . . This volume of Collected Papers stands as an inspiration to the next generation of theorists.

John Rawls's work on justice has drawn more commentary and aroused wider attention than any other work in moral or political philosophy in the twentieth century. Rawls is the author of two major treatises, A Theory of Justice (1971 ) and Political Liberalism ( 1993); it is said that A Theory of Justice revived political philosophy in the English-speaking world. But before and after writing his great treatises Rawls produced a steady stream of essays. Some of these essays articulate views of justice and liberalism distinct from those found in the two books. They are important in and of themselves because of the deep issues about the nature of justice, moral reasoning,and liberalism they raise as well as for the light they shed on the evolution of Rawls's views. Some of the articles tackle issues not addressed in either book. They help identify some of the paths open to liberal theorists of justice and some of the knotty problems that liberal theorists must seek to resolve.A complete collection of John Rawls's essays is long overdue.

Editor's Preface

Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics

Two Concepts of Rules

Justice as Fairness

Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice

The Sense of Justice

Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play

Distributive Justice

Distributive Justice: Some Addenda

The Justification of Civil Disobedience

Justice as Reciprocity

Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion

Reply to Alexander and Musgrave

A Kantian Conception of Equality

Fairness to Goodness

The Independence of Moral Theory

Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory

Social Unity and Primary Goods

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical

Preface for the French Edition of A Theory of Justice

The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus

The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good

The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus

Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy

The Law of Peoples

Fifty Years after Hiroshima

The Idea of Public Reason Revisited

Commonweal Interview with John Rawls

Credits

Index