John Rawls in Light of the Archive: Introduction to the Symposium on the Rawls Papers

This symposium calls attention to the archival papers of the political philosopher John Rawls. As the symposium papers show, the archive illuminates the development of Rawls’s philosophical and political visions, showing the varied intellectual traditions on which he drew. The papers portray Rawls as a naturalist who believed that moral and political arguments should be made in light of facts about natural human capacities and propensities. The papers explore Rawls’s engagement with Wittgenstein, Dewey, and game theory. And the papers present conflicting accounts of Rawls’s democratic society and the role of democratic debate in the justification of a political vision.