title: Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy
author:  John Rawls 
description: After the publication of <i>A Theory of Justice</i> in 1971, Rawls (1921-2002) became the most influential moral and political philosopher in the Western world. As such, the issuing of this posthumous volume, carefully edited by [Samuel] Freeman, a former student and teaching assistant from Rawls's courses at Harvard University, is a major event. (David Gordon <i>Library Journal</i> 2007-02-01)<br /><br />Rawls was a dedicated and remarkably winning teacher, deeply admired by generations of grateful Harvard University pupils. Reading <i>Lectures</i> you can see why. The tone throughout is unassuming but assured, the purpose consistently to make clear, to get into steady common view what he took to be the key issues in the grand texts that he chose to explore. There is something soothing and encouraging about being guided through the works of Hobbes and Locke, Hume and J. S. Mill, Henry Sidgwick and Bishop Butler--and even Karl Marx--in these calm and measured tones...There is much quiet pleasure to be drawn from these pages, as well as a great deal of instruction about the terms in which Rawls came to frame his own ethical conceptions and the secular liberalism he believed them to imply. Anyone seriously interested in the development of Rawls's thinking and his sense of the relations between his approach and those of major predecessors in the history of Anglophone liberalism will find the insight it provides on numerous points indispensable. (John Dunn <i>Times Higher Education Supplement</i> 2007-04-20)<br /><br />While many contemporary philosophers have deliberately shunned the history of political philosophy as irrelevant to "doing" philosophy, Rawls shows himself to be a conscientious and painstaking reader of the great works of the philosophical tradition of which he was a part. He regarded his own work as both indebted to and as culminating the great tradition that he interprets for his readers. (Steven B. Smith <i>New York Sun</i> 2007-05-11)<br /><br />John Rawls is perhaps the most influential Western political philosopher of the twentieth century. The late Harvard philosopher's 1971 <i>A Theory of Justice</i> is often credited with bestowing that title upon him. In that book he drew on the works of John Locke and Immanuel Kant, among others, to criticize utilitarian theory and defend an egalitarian version of political liberalism. This volume draws together his Harvard lectures on political philosophy and liberalism, providing his insights and interpretations of Locke and Kant, as well as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and others. In these lectures Rawls reveals how he interpreted these philosophers both in light of their historical circumstances and problems they were trying to address, and also in light of contemporary political debates. (D. Schultz <i>Choice</i> 2007-07-01)<br /><br />A definitive and magnificent version of Rawls's teachings on the history of political philosophy...The distinction between the rational and the reasonable runs through these lectures, and through all of Rawls's writings. Its importance signals one essential task that political philosophy should assume even in a democratic age: democracies cannot long endure, however high-sounding the principles they profess, unless their citizens learn to love and to practice the civic virtues of fairness and open discussion that alone can make these principles a reality...<i>Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy</i> shows us a Rawls keenly aware of the historical underpinnings of his own theoretical constructions...His <i>Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy</i> complement more systematic works such as <i>A Theory of Justice</i>. They make plain how the careful analysis of the insights and the limitations of his predecessors helped him to fashion many of the elements of his own political thought...Rawls's writing is at its most powerful when he thus casts aside his contractual scaffolding and speaks directly to our political conscience. Then he impels us to see more clearly than before the moral substance of the democratic ideal. He shows us in an exemplary way how philosophy can be democratic. (Charles Larmore <i>The New Republic</i> 2008-02-27)<br /><br />Rawls has an enormously authoritative and interesting way of thinking and writing about the history of philosophy. His approach and tone is that of a world-class athlete watching old films to analyze the technique of his great predecessors. It is a pleasure to listen in. (Matthew Simpson <i>Journal of the History of Philosophy</i> 2008-04-01)
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  the cambridge companion to
  
  R A W L S
  
  Each volume of this series of companions to major philosophers contains
  specially commissioned essays by an international team of scholars, together
  with a substantial bibliography, and will serve as a reference work for
  students and nonspecialists. One aim of the series is to dispel the
  intimidation such readers often feel when faced with the work of a difficult
  and challenging thinker.
  
  John Rawls is the most significant and influential political and moral
  philosopher of the twentieth-century. His work has profoundly shaped
  contemporary discussions of social, political, and economic justice in
  philosophy, law, political science, economics, and other social disciplines.
  In this exciting collection of new essays, many of the world’s leading
  political and moral theorists discuss the full range of Rawls’s contribution
  to the concepts of political and economic justice, democracy, lib