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John RawlsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The two principles of justice are “standards by which to assess economic arrangements and policies, and their background institutions” (228). Rawls writes that “[a] doctrine of political economy must include an interpretation of the public good which is based on a conception of justice” (229), adding that:
[a] political opinion concerns what advances the good of the body politic as a whole and invokes some criterion for the just division of social advantages […] Thus an economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and needs but a way of creating and fashioning wants in the future (229).
A theory of justice defines a varied class of goods normally wanted in rational plans of life, but within this varied class of goods allows a person choice in their specific ends. While justice as fairness contains individualistic features, its two principles are not contingent on present desires or social conditions. This just, basic structure is a standard in appraising institutions and guiding social change.
By John Rawls