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.

約翰·羅爾斯（John Rawls，1921—2002），美國當代著名哲學傢、倫理學傢、政治學傢、 哈佛大學教授。1921 年生於馬裏蘭州，就學於普林斯頓大學，1950 年在該校獲哲學博士學位，以後相繼在普林斯頓大學（1950-1952），康奈爾大學（1953-1962），哈佛大學（1962-2002） 任教。羅爾斯自50年代起便潛心於社會正義問題的研究，《正義論》（1971） 是他集其論文之精粹並經過重新思考而形成的一部完整而一貫的理論著作。羅爾斯還齣版瞭其它專著：《政治自由主義》 （1993）， 《萬民法》 （1999）， 《道德哲學史講演》 （2000）。 《正義論》已被譽為二戰後政治哲學、倫理學領域中最重要的理論著作，將被列入曆史經典名著之林。