John Rawls: Envisioning Democracy. 1953-58.

This is a draft chapter from a forthcoming intellectual biography of John Rawls. This draft chapter covers Rawls's years at Cornell University from 1953-1958 and the gestation of the first (quite incomplete and underdeveloped) expression of justice as fairness in 1958. It situates Rawls's work relative to the work of other philosophers and to the social sciences and reviews key themes developed in his teaching during the period.