John Rawls

johnKarma

Hello all,

I'm currently doing a course on John Rawls' philosophy with a particular focus on the notion of "Democratic Peace" as elaborated in The Law of Peoples. I'm plowing through the reading at the moment and frankly I find Rawls' thought to be very interesting but his prose style to be turgid and impossible to read. I'm wondering if anyone could point me in the direction of some good commentaries / summaries of the work which will enable to me to tackle Rawls' original texts more efficiently. I find that if you have a basic idea of what you're reading already even the most dense prose becomes easy to read.

Also, I'd be fascinated to hear from anyone who has studied Rawls in the past.

Thanks in advance!

DadaKopf

Ah Rawls is good alright. I don't really agree with him on many points, but he was such a skillful thinker and writer.

Not the most exciting to read, but I found him clear and considered in how he wrote. He was someone who was very sensitive to language and meaning. If you want turgid and impossible to read, try Kant.

Try the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I think there's a Rawls entry on it. Otherwise... you have a library to visit!

Democratic Peace is a tough concept when you get beyond the basic assumption - I haven't read Rawls' ideas on it. Maybe *you* could point me to any online sources. I haven't access to a library

johnKarma

DadaKopf wrote:

Democratic Peace is a tough concept when you get beyond the basic assumption - I haven't read Rawls' ideas on it. Maybe *you* could point me to any online sources. I haven't access to a library

Well I managed to find one useful article on JSTOR which accurately summarises much of the Law of Peoples. In fact the article sets out to do exactly what I was looking for: provide a contextualised overview of the work. I can email you a pdf of it if you want (I don't think I should post copyrighted materials on boards...)