Published in journal "Philosophy and Culture", 2014-4 in rubric "Characteristics of society", pages 525-534.

Resume: The purpose of the present research article is to provide a critical evaluation of John Rawls’ theory of justice. The first part of the article is devoted to the main tasks and goals set by John Rawls at the moment of him writing his main work as well as the description of John Rawls’ method of ‘reflective equilibrium’. The second part of the article is aimed at studying arguments used by Rawls when proving his principles of justice, from intuitive arguments to Ralws’ attempt to revive the social contract. The third part of the article is focused on criticizing weak points in Rawls’ theory. In his research the author uses the method called ‘constructive interpretation’ offered by Ronald Dworkin. The goal of this method is to present a subject under research from the best side in order to increase the efficiency of expected criticizing. The present article is devoted to the critical review of one of the most powerful theories of justice that have been created lately. Today this theory of justice is taken by the majority as common sense. The goal of the author is to prove that Rawls’ theory does not quite follow the principles that were developed based on that theory.

Keywords: justice, Rawls, social contract, reflective equilibrium, Dworkin, freedom, equality, principles, social inequality, natural inequality.

DOI: 10.7256/1999-2793.2014.4.11339

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Churnosov, I. M. The Balance Between Equality and Freedom in John Rawls’ Theory of Justice. // Philosophy and Culture. - 2014. - ¹ 4. - pp. 525-534. DOI: 10.7256/1999-2793.2014.4.11339