John Rawls

Lore & Background

Rawls was born in Baltimore, Maryland, the second of five sons. He graduated from Princeton University in 1943 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1946, including tours in New Guinea and the Philippines, and was awarded a Combat Infantryman Badge and Bronze Star.

After the war, he returned to Princeton, earning his PhD in 1950. He taught at Princeton, Cornell, MIT, and Harvard, where he held the James Bryant Conant University Professorship until his retirement in 1991. He died of heart failure in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 2002.

Reader's Guide

Rawls's theory of 'justice as fairness' recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society. His argument uses a thought experiment called the 'original position'. In his later work Political Liberalism (1993), he addresses how political power can be exercised legitimately in a society with diverse moral, religious, and philosophical views. He received the Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy and the National Humanities Medal in 1999.

Did You Know?

• Rawls's senior thesis at Princeton was titled 'Meaning of Sin and Faith' and attacked Pelagianism.
• He lost his Christian faith while serving in the Pacific during World War II.
• Rawls was demoted from sergeant to private after refusing to discipline a fellow soldier, though this story is not supported by reliable biographical sources.