November 27, 2002

In the same year, two

In the same year, two giants of 20th Century political philosophy died. Robert Nozick passed away in January, and now John Rawls died this past Sunday. About Rawls' work, Jacob Levy writes,

Within Anglo-American philosophy it renewed the sense that it was possible to engage in rigorous, serious, meaningful debate about moral and political questions. And it serves to this day as the most influential, most important critique of both aggregative-utilitarian substitutes for a theory of justice and radically-egalitarian versions of such a theory. He was, in addition, a famously effective teacher who shaped two generations of Harvard philosophers, and a gracious gentleman who sought conversation and shared intellectual progress.

Political philosophers, policymakers, and lawyers are all in the debt of a modest man who mistakenly thought himself to be one of Keynes's obscure academic scribblers, only to turn out to have been a genuine leader in philosophical and political thought.

"John Rawls, Towering Figure of Political Philosophy; at 81"

"Rawls Remembered"