John Rawls

John Bordley Rawls was born February 21, 1921, and spent his career working in moral, legal, and political philosophy within the modern liberal tradition. When A Theory of Justice appeared in 1971, it resurrected normative political philosophy as a serious discipline; the book argued for "justice as fairness" - equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity, and arranging inequalities to benefit the least advantaged. His method was the "original position," a thought experiment in which people choose principles for society without knowing their future place in it. Political Liberalism followed in 1993, tackling how legitimate political power works when citizens hold incompatible moral and religious views. In 1999 he received the Schock Prize and the National Humanities Medal from President Clinton, and by 2008 American political theorists ranked him first for impact on the field in the prior two decades. He died November 24, 2002.