Rawls: Time and Strategy

Abstract

This article explores and interprets Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, emphasizing the connections between the model of moral agent and the “principle of difference ”, responsible for the maximization of the poor’s expectations and the basis of the notion of “justice as equity”. Following Rawls, the author opposes collective strategic rationality to individualistic rationality and points out the need for an understanding of social institutions as cooperative entreprises, in a long term view. The article concludes numbering the restrictions to the application of the “principle of difference ”.