Prawo jako narzędzie sprawiedliwej kooperacji w społeczeństwie demokratycznym. Filozofia polityczna Johna Rawlsa z perspektywy prawniczej

Abstract

The jurisprudential project pursued in this book is a study of ideas formulated by one of the most eminent philosophers of the twentieth century – john Rawls (1921–2002). during his lifetime, from the 1970s on, you could hardly imagine a book on practical philosophy or politics without passages addressing the notions of the original position, reflective equilibrium, the difference principle, an overlapping consensus, and public reason. But also today we constantly observe Rawls’s considerable influence over political philosophy, not only in american academia (where we find plenty of his direct disciples) but also elsewhere, far beyond english-speaking world. His thought has been a negative or positive source of inspiration not only for liberals, but also for thinkers of nearly the entire politico-philosophical spectrum. one of the biggest reasons for that is the fact that in his opus magnum, “A Theory of Justice”, he gave a new lively impulse to normative reflection on the social world by rediscovering the tradition of social contract. constructing the idea of original position and developing the conception of justice as fairness, Rawls did even more – he created a new paradigm in political philosophy, and we may speak about ‘Rawlsianism’, just as we talk about ‘Kantianism’ or ‘Marxism’. But “A Theory of Justice” is not the whole story. In his subsequent books and papers from the 1980s on, Rawls introduced new ideas of Kantian constructivism, political liberalism with its central idea of public reason, and many more. In the late works Rawls modified the original project but – as the last book “Justice as Fairness: A Restatement” shows us – he never abandoned its central ideas.