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Jun 2023

1h 1m

Rawls, Capitalism & Justice

About this episode

This week Daniel Chandler and Lea Ypi join David to talk about the legacy of the great American political philosopher John Rawls and his theory of justice. Did Rawls provide a prescription for the only fair way of doing capitalism? Or did he really show why capitalism and justice will never be reconciled? What can Rawls teach us about how to treat each other as equals? And does it even make sense to talk about justice in Britain or America when the world as a whole remains so fundamentally unequal?

Daniel Chandler’s new book is Free and Equal: What Would a Fair Society Look Like?

Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History is out now in paperback.

You can hear David’s History of Ideas episode about Rawls and the theory of justice here.

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