John Rawls Autograph Letter Signed.

RAWLS, John.

$2,800.00

Item Number: 146554

Cambridge, Massachusetts:, January 14, 1985.

Rare autograph letter signed by one of the most influential political philosophers of the 20th century. Small octavo, one page on Harvard University Department of Philosophy letterhead, the text reads in full, “Jan 14, 1985 Dear Annette Many thanks for your review of Parfit’s Reasons & Persons with your splendid & illuminating appreciation of this work. You provide some ways to focus on it which had not occurred to me. I agree with you on its importance & no doubt it will have major effets on contemporary discussion, & into the future. On the other hand, I find myself in certain ways disconcerted by it, since often I find myself utterly at odds with his methods & procedures – for example, at odds with its empiricists & reductionist (so it seems to me) metaphysics. Perhaps I am more of a Kantian than I thought! best Jack P.S. I regret not to have read your ‘Why Hume is not a contractarian,’ which you kindly had sent to me; or your most recent ‘Trust & Anti-Trust.’ I plan to study these soon, as these topics much interest me. But in regard to your question re the latter, I doubt that you are contractarian really, since I think my new view really presupposes – at least as I use it – the idea of cooperation, which itself involves the idea of trust. So I think its rather the other way around. Moreover, trust is, I suspect, too deep to explain. One rather just elucidates it in various ways. Those who reject it – well, one can’t trust them, with all the consequences that entails.” The recipient, Annette Baier was a New Zealand philosopher and Hume scholar, who focused in particular on Hume’s moral psychology. Baier’s approach to ethics is that women and men make their decisions about right and wrong based on different value systems: men take their moral decisions according to an idea of justice, while women are motivated by a sense of trust or caring. The history of philosophy having been overwhelmingly compiled by men, she suggests, leads to a body of thought which apparently ignores the role of nurture and trust in human philosophy. In near fine condition with light creasing to the top edge.

John Rawls was an American moral, legal and political philosopher in the modern liberal tradition and the writer of one of the greatest English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century, 'A Theory of Justice.' His theory of "justice as fairness" recommends equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and facilitating the maximum benefit to the least advantaged members of society in any case where inequalities may occur. To argue these principles of social justice, Rawls used a thought experiment called the "original position," in which people deliberately select what kind of society they would choose to live in if they did not know which social position they would personally occupy. His philosophical work has proved revolutionary in moral and political philosophy and in public political discourse, selling over 300,000 copies and being held by student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in 1989 as a symbol of political protest.