John Rawls

J. Donald Moon is the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Professor in the College of Social Studies at Wesleyan University.

• Chapter One: Introduction: Challenges to LiberalismChapter Two: Political Liberalism: Justice as Social Cooperation1. Justice as grounded in comprehensive doctrines2. Political conceptions of justice3. Political liberalism4. Justice as Fairness5. ConclusionChapter Three: Public Reason and Inclusion1 Restraint and privatization2 The need for consensus3 The question of priority4 Toleration and exclusionChapter Four: Class, Inequality, and Distributive Justice1 Egalitarian liberalism2 Incentives and inequality3 Pluralism and social justice4 Merit and desertChapter Five: Global Pluralism and International Justice1 Rawls’s Law of Peoples2 Inclusiveness of the society of peoples3 Peoples vs persons4. Globalization, democracy and domestic basic structures5 Conclusion: justice and global inequalityChapter Six: Conclusion

Moon has written a brief overview of John Rawls’s political philosophy. He also reviews some major criticisms of Rawls and defends Rawls against those criticisms. This book would be an excellent starting point for readers seeking a serious introduction to Rawls and the secondary literature Rawls’s work generated. Moon provides a persuasive synthesis of Rawls’s major works as a whole rather than seeing them as distinct works. The emphasis is primarily on tying Rawls’s conclusions together rather than on Rawls’s method. Moon argues that Rawls’s liberalism is a 'radically new approach' in the history of political theory because it rejects a 'comprehensive doctrine' that does not have wide enough appeal in late modernity to serve as a fundamental principle. Moon describes Rawls as a 'chastened liberal,' which stands in contrast to Enlightenment liberalism, rendered untenable by the traumas of the 20th century. Moon presents Rawls’s theory as political and practical rather than abstract. Rawls developed a justification of liberalism that satisfies democratic norms. The book raises a number of important points, not just about Rawls’s work but also about 20th-century political philosophy and the project of political philosophy in general. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections.