Justice as Fairness in a Practical Context

This paper deals with John Rawls (1921-2002) and his work A Theory of Justice (1975), which Rawls himself calls “justice as fairness.” Basically, his theory is understood as distributive justice. In this context, on the one hand, important aspects of his theory will be explained, and on the other hand, the applicability of his basic ideas on the level of politics will be discussed. In order to trace the justice debate within political ethics a classification between equality ideals as well as a division between deontological and consequentialist theories of justice are carried out.