This volume originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement of his theory of justice as fairness, revised in light of his more recent papers and his treatise Political Liberalism (1993). John Rawls offers a broad overview of his main lines of thought and also explores specific issues never before addressed in any of his writings. Rawls is well aware that since the publication of "A Theory of Justice" in 1971, American society has moved farther away from the idea of justice as fairness. Yet his ideas retain their power and relevance to debates in a pluralistic society about the meaning and theoretical viability of liberalism. This book demonstrates that moral clarity can be achieved even when a collective commitment to justice is uncertain.

约翰·罗尔斯（John Rawls，1921—2002），美国当代著名哲学家、伦理学家、政治学家、 哈佛大学教授。1921 年生于马里兰州，就学于普林斯顿大学，1950 年在该校获哲学博士学位，以后相继在普林斯顿大学（1950-1952），康奈尔大学（1953-1962），哈佛大学（1962-2002） 任教。罗尔斯自50年代起便潜心于社会正义问题的研究，《正义论》（1971） 是他集其论文之精粹并经过重新思考而形成的一部完整而一贯的理论著作。罗尔斯还出版了其它专著：《政治自由主义》 （1993）， 《万民法》 （1999）， 《道德哲学史讲演》 （2000）。 《正义论》已被誉为二战后政治哲学、伦理学领域中最重要的理论著作，将被列入历史经典名著之林。