Reading Rawls in 2026
When I graduated fifteen years ago on the work of John Rawls, it was widely regarded as dated. A Theory of Justice had been published in 1971, and the lessons of Rawls’s masterpiece had by then been so thoroughly absorbed into the modern democratic rule of law that studying it felt, to many, like arriving after the fact.
Fifteen years on, the world looks different. The existence of a democratic rule-of-law state is no longer something one can take for granted, and the number of countries that can genuinely claim that form of government continues to decline each year, notwithstanding recent developments in Poland and Hungary.
Yet A Theory of Justice is not dated, nor has it ever been. If recent history has taught us anything, it is that the ease with which the democratic rule of law was once assumed was itself a case of taking things for granted—hardly evidence that such a system is secure. Anywhere in the world, at any moment, a constitutional state can be dismantled and replaced with something darker in a matter of months. Poland and Hungary also show that once it has been eroded, rebuilding it is no simple task.
Because Rawls’s insights are more relevant than ever, I have returned to his magnum opus. A Theory of Justice does not answer the criticisms Rawls would later confront—criticisms that led to Political Liberalism—but it remains a work of striking purity, a masterpiece in its own right, however awkwardly written.
Here, I will try to give an account of my re-encounter with what may well be the most important work of political philosophy of the past thousand years.1
I understand this will clash with many opinions. But I’m not just saying this to shock: I truly believe it.↩