Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition-justice as fairness-and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. "Each person," writes Rawls, "possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override." Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls's theory is as powerful today as it was when first published.

自1971年出现以来，约翰-罗尔斯的《正义论》已成为一部经典。现在，作者对原版进行了修订，清除了他和其他人在原书中发现的一些困难。罗尔斯旨在表达民主传统共同核心的一个基本部分--作为公平的正义，并为功利主义提供一个替代方案，该方案自19世纪以来一直主导着盎格鲁-撒克逊的政治思想传统。罗尔斯用社会契约的理想取代了对公民作为自由和平等的人的基本权利和自由的更令人满意的说明。"罗尔斯写道："每个人都拥有一种建立在正义基础上的不可侵犯性，即使是整个社会的福利也不能凌驾于它之上。" 罗尔斯的理论推进了卢梭、康德、爱默生和林肯的思想，在今天，他的理论与首次出版时一样强大。