Rawls (The Routledge Philosophers)

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This is an excellent book on a fairly difficult topic.

Reading Rawls' work can be challenging. Rawls was, in general, a meticulous thinker and made strenuous attempts to work out his conclusions systematically, showing all the steps needed to get from his starting point to the final products.

The detailed reasoning is admirable but comes at the cost of considerable detail that sometimes obscures major points. In addition, Rawls was not a gifted writer, though the published versions of his lectures show him to be a much better writer than is apparent from his major philosophical works. Rawls also produced a significant modification of his views later in life and some of the contrasts between his thinkingi in the great A Theory of Justice and the later Political Liberalism can be confusing.

Freeman's book has 3 major virtues. First, it is a thorough, sympathetic, and systematic explication of Rawls' thought across his whole career.

The book is largely chronologically organized. As a result, it is significantly longer than most books in this fine series but the extra length is well justified. Freeman does an excellent job of balancing exposition of Rawls' major conclusions with discussions of his rationales for these conclusions without overly burdening readers.

Second, Freeman does an excellent job of showing the major lines of continuity across Rawls' whole and rather long career. Crudely, three themes emerge. One is Rawls' emphasis on the central role of free and equal persons. Second is his fundamental contractualism as a procedure for free and equal persons to develop just institutions. Third is the importance of society providing just opportunity for just pursuit of personal and moral goods the rational and reasonable.

Freeman does particularly well in showing the relationship between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism. He argues that Rawls felt the need to introduce the modifications of the latter because he detected a flaw in A Theory that would imperil the stability of this type of just state.

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This resulted in a retreat from some of the over-arching moral claims in A Theory in favor of a more modest but in actual terms still quite ambitious model of a just state that still reflects Rawls' major goals. Like the other books in this series, there is an excellent bibliography for future reading. There is also a useful glossary of terminology used by Rawls.

I admit that I wasn't certain that Samuel Freeman's book on Rawls would be terrific. First, it is very long, and I imagined that a good introductory text would be less than pages long incl. Second, although I'm a huge admirer of Freeman as a philosopher, all his work that I'd previously read is aimed squarely at scholars; he works on exceedingly difficult questions, makes complicated arguments, and although the pay off is always, in my experience, more than worth the effort, I never expect undergraduates, for example, to be able to make that effort. But this book is a triumph.

A brilliantly careful, utterly transparent, account of Rawls's thought and an admirable presentation of the state of the debates around Rawls's work.

Forcing students to read Rawls is the right thing to do; but I shall never again force them to read him without providing Freeman's text as indispensable help. When I started reading it I was in the midst of a glut of work, and kept trying to put it down so I could get on with things, but couldn't. It is, as it should be at this length, comprehensive--chapters on each of the two principles, on the OP, on the basic structure, and a wonderfully clear chapter on the importance of stability, and what it is that stability consists in.

Then a chapter on Kantian constructivism, which really helped illuminate for me, at least, but I have always been unsure about this the relationship between the Dewey lectures and the later work, two chapters on political liberalism and one on the Law of Peoples. I guess the book is intended primarily as a companion in a comprehensive course on Rawls's work--read all three main books, and Freeman's so that the students can tell what is going on.

But the first six chapters alone justify the low price of the book so it is useable alongside A Theory of Justice or Justice as Fairness alone and I can't imagine teaching Rawls to undergraduates again without using it.

I fyou read Rawls in college, and feel like revisiting him, use Freeman's book alongside it. This is a extremely good book. Freeman shows himself a try expert in Rawls's work. If you want to read Rawls's books. I suggest you to read this book along with this. But also alot of essays, shorer books and the relation between all of this is not forgotten. It really helped me to understand Rawl's theory, thoughts and ideas.

Apart from an explenation on Rawls's theory Freeman also is duscussing several of Rawls's critics. So all in all a invaluable book to those who wish to understand one of the greatest political philosophers of all time. The book is not pages as stating here but more close to , or atleast mine is.

Rawls by Samuel Freeman

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Rawls (The Routledge Philosophers)

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Aug 12, Sergei Moska rated it it was amazing. Freeman's exposition is extremely clear, and I came away from the text with a much solidified grasp on Rawls' thought, and especially on the crucial differences between Rawls' projects in Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism. I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to have a strong working knowledge of Rawls without having to delve into the primary texts.

This text on its own will get you very far A fantastic, comprehensive text on Rawls, spanning Theory of Justice to Law of Peoples.

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This text on its own will get you very far. That said, two caveats: I think that this book is appropriate for those who are totally unfamiliar with him, but I can't promise that this will be so 2-Freeman repeats himself a lot throughout the text. Normally this would be annoying, but I strangely didn't mind it at all. This tendency of his might have the happy side-effect of reinforcing through repetition the structure of Rawls' argument. Jan 27, Joey rated it it was amazing. This writer is really easy to read. Michiel rated it really liked it Dec 17, Jeppe von rated it it was amazing Mar 31, C rated it liked it Dec 01, Simon Richardson rated it it was amazing Feb 09, Steve G rated it really liked it Mar 18, Andrew Clark rated it it was amazing Nov 11, Saeid rated it really liked it Aug 29, Mike rated it it was amazing Jan 04, Areti rated it it was amazing Oct 01, Rob rated it liked it Feb 20, Andrew rated it it was amazing Sep 30, Marie rated it it was amazing Aug 17, Darren rated it really liked it Oct 16, Tim Lisle-williams rated it it was amazing Dec 18, Jason Merrill rated it it was amazing Feb 08, Stephen rated it really liked it Mar 13, John rated it liked it Dec 13, Rob rated it it was ok Jan 30,

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