20th century · 1921–2002
Who influenced John Rawls?
Influences and legacy
Justice designed behind a veil of ignorance — liberalism's greatest late statement.
John Rawls was influenced by Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill, and went on to influence Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit. That is 4 lines of the 448 documented lines of influence between the 279 thinkers on this map.
Read on Wikipedia Portrait: Published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Photograph taken by Alec Rawls, John's son. The portrait wa…, Public domain See the whole map
Who was John Rawls?
John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) is generally credited with reviving normative political philosophy. Its "justice as fairness" calls for equal basic liberties, equality of opportunity and, where inequalities exist, the greatest benefit to the least advantaged. Rawls argued for these principles through the "original position": choosing a society without knowing what place you would hold in it.
His later Political Liberalism (1993) asks how power can be used legitimately among citizens with conflicting moral and religious views. Courts in the United States and Canada cite him, and a 2008 survey of American political theorists ranked him first among scholars with the greatest impact on the field.
Summarized from the lead of the Wikipedia article.
Who influenced John Rawls?
2 direct influences on this map, earliest first.
- Immanuel Kant 1724–1804
- John Stuart Mill 1806–1873
Who did John Rawls influence?
2 thinkers on this map draw directly on John Rawls.
- Robert Nozick 1938–2002
- Derek Parfit 1942–2017
The line of teachers behind John Rawls
The longest documented line of influence ending at John Rawls runs 20 generations back, to Thales of Miletus.
- Thales of Miletus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Anaxagoras
- Socrates
- Antisthenes
- Diogenes of Sinope
- Crates of Thebes
- Zeno of Citium
- Seneca
- Tertullian
- Augustine of Hippo
- Anselm of Canterbury
- Peter Lombard
- Thomas Aquinas
- René Descartes
- Thomas Hobbes
- Baruch Spinoza
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
- Christian Wolff
- Immanuel Kant
- John Rawls
Two steps away from John Rawls
Indirect influences
Contemporaries of John Rawls
Thinkers on this map born within 25 years of John Rawls, with no direct line between them.
- Philippa Foot 1920–2010
- G. E. M. Anscombe 1919–2001
- P. F. Strawson 1919–2006
- Louis Althusser 1918–1990
- Gilles Deleuze 1925–1995
- Frantz Fanon 1925–1961
- Donald Davidson 1917–2003
- Michael Dummett 1925–2011
John Rawls by the numbers
- Direct influences
- 2
- Direct followers
- 2
- Thinkers upstream
- 92
- Thinkers downstream
- 2
- Wikipedia languages
- 67 — #28 of 84 among 20th-century philosophers
- Card rarity
- Epic
Questions about John Rawls
- Who influenced John Rawls?
- Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill.
- Who did John Rawls influence?
- Robert Nozick and Derek Parfit.
- When did John Rawls live?
- 1921–2002. The map files John Rawls under the 20th century.
- How rare is the John Rawls card?
- Wikipedia carries an article on John Rawls in 67 languages, which makes it an Epic card. Legendary starts at 100 languages, Epic at 50 and Rare at 25.
More 20th-century philosophers
- Jean-Paul Sartre 1905–1980
- Albert Camus 1913–1960
- Max Weber 1864–1920
- Simone de Beauvoir 1908–1986
- Bertrand Russell 1872–1970
- Ludwig Wittgenstein 1889–1951
- Martin Heidegger 1889–1976
- Umberto Eco 1932–2016