Abstract

John Rawls was, we know, the most influential political philosopher of his time. I want to talk about the influence of his ideas not just in philosophy but in the broader theory of government, and in political and intellectual life more generally. Though he never aimed at this—indeed he held out against it—he was one of the very few preeminent intellectuals whose work, like Freud’s and Darwin’s, quickly crossed from a single academic field into the academy generally and then into general culture.