Editing John Rawls (section)

==Biography==
===Early life and education===
Rawls was born on February 21, 1921, in [[Baltimore]], [[Maryland]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=John Rawls (1921-2002) {{!}} Issue 121 {{!}} Philosophy Now |url=https://philosophynow.org/issues/121/John_Rawls_1921-2002 |access-date=November 4, 2022 |website=philosophynow.org |archive-date=November 4, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221104035848/https://philosophynow.org/issues/121/John_Rawls_1921-2002 |url-status=live }}</ref> He was the second of five sons born to William Lee Rawls, a prominent Baltimore attorney, and Anna Abell Stump Rawls.<ref name=":2">{{cite news |last1=Rogers |first1=Ben |date=November 27, 2002 |title=Obituary: John Rawls |newspaper=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/27/guardianobituaries.obituaries |access-date=August 26, 2018 |archive-date=August 7, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190807100815/https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/nov/27/guardianobituaries.obituaries |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Freemanxix">Freeman, 2010:xix</ref> Tragedy struck Rawls at a young age:

{{blockquote|Two of his brothers died in childhood because they had contracted fatal illnesses from him. ... In 1928, the seven-year-old Rawls contracted [[diphtheria]]. His brother Bobby, younger by 20 months, visited him in his room and was fatally infected. The next winter, Rawls contracted [[pneumonia]]. Another younger brother, Tommy, caught the illness from him and died.<ref name="Gordon">[[David Gordon (philosopher)|Gordon, David]] (2008-07-28) [http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2008/jul/28/00024/ Going Off the Rawls] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120224221101/http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2008/jul/28/00024/ |date=2012-02-24 }}, ''[[The American Conservative]]''</ref>}}

Rawls's biographer [[Thomas Pogge]] calls the loss of the brothers the "most important events in John's childhood."

[[File:John Rawls (1937 senior portrait).jpg|thumb|alt=Photo portrait of a young man with short hair wearing a suit and tie|Rawls as a [[Kent School]] senior, 1937|left|241x241px]]{{Liberalism sidebar}}Rawls graduated in [[Baltimore]] before enrolling in the [[Kent School]], an [[Episcopal Church in the United States of America|Episcopalian]] [[University-preparatory school|preparatory school]] in [[Connecticut]]. Upon graduation in 1939, Rawls attended [[Princeton University]], where he was accepted into [[The Ivy Club]] and the [[American Whig-Cliosophic Society]]. At Princeton, Rawls was influenced by [[Norman Malcolm]], [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]'s student. During his last two years at Princeton, he "became deeply concerned with theology and its doctrines." He considered attending a seminary to study for the Episcopal priesthood and wrote an "intensely religious senior thesis (''BI)''."<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/rawls/|title=John Rawls|last=Wenar|first=Leif|date=January 1, 2013|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|edition=Winter 2013}}</ref> In his 181-page long thesis titled "Meaning of Sin and Faith," Rawls attacked [[Pelagianism]] because it "would render the Cross of Christ to no effect."<ref name=":1">{{cite thesis |last=Rawls |first=John Bordley |date=1942 |title=A Brief Inquiry Into The Meaning of Sin and Faith |url=https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp01tt44pn90s |degree=BA |chapter= |publisher=Princeton University |docket= |oclc= |access-date= |archive-date=December 23, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231223160438/https://dataspace.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp01tt44pn90s |url-status=live }}</ref> Rawls graduated from Princeton in 1943 with a Bachelor of Arts, [[Latin honors#United States|''summa cum laude'']].<ref name="Freemanxix" />

===Military service, 1943–46===
Rawls enlisted in the [[United States Army|U.S. Army]] in February 1943. During [[World War II]], Rawls served as an [[infantry]]man in the Pacific with the 128th Infantry Regiment of the [[32nd Infantry Division (United States)|32nd Infantry Division]], where he served a tour of duty in [[New Guinea]] and was awarded a [[Combat Infantryman Badge|Combat Infantryman Badge]] and [[Bronze Star Medal|Bronze Star]]; and the [[Philippines Campaign (1944–45)|Philippines]], where he endured intensive trench warfare and witnessed traumatizing scenes of violence and bloodshed.<ref name=":4">{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=2014-06-13 |title=Thinkers at War – John Rawls {{!}} Military History Matters |url=https://www.military-history.org/feature/thinkers-at-war-john-rawls.htm |access-date=2023-12-23 |website=Military History Matters |language=en-US |archive-date=December 23, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231223164023/https://www.military-history.org/feature/thinkers-at-war-john-rawls.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> It was there that he lost his Christian faith and became an atheist.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/john-rawls-theorist-modern-liberalism|title=John Rawls: Theorist of Modern Liberalism|publisher=[[The Heritage Foundation]]|date=August 13, 2014|access-date=February 26, 2017|archive-date=November 2, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191102090242/https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/john-rawls-theorist-modern-liberalism|url-status=unfit}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|title=Church, State and Public Justice: Five Views|year=2009|publisher=InterVarsity Press|isbn=978-0830874743|page=34|author1=Ronald J. Sider |author2=Paul Charles Kemeny |author3=Derek H. Davis |author4=Clarke E. Cochran |author5=Corwin Smidt |quote=Religious beliefs, argues John Rawls—a Harvard philosopher and self-identifying atheist—can be so divisive in a pluralistic culture that they subvert the stability of a society.}}</ref>

Following the surrender of Japan, Rawls became part of [[General MacArthur]]'s occupying army<ref name="Freemanxix" /> and was promoted to sergeant. But he became disillusioned with the military when he saw the aftermath of the atomic blast in [[Hiroshima]]. Rawls then disobeyed an order to discipline a fellow soldier, "believing no punishment was justified," and was "demoted back to a [[private (rank)|private]]." Disenchanted, he left the military in January 1946.<ref name=":4" />

===Academic career===
In early 1946, Rawls returned to Princeton to pursue a doctorate in moral philosophy. He married Margaret Warfield Fox, a [[Brown University]] graduate, in 1949. They had four children: [[Anne Warfield Rawls|Anne Warfield]], Robert Lee, Alexander Emory, and Elizabeth Fox.<ref name="Freemanxix" />

Rawls received his PhD from Princeton in 1950 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled ''A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to Judgments on the Moral Worth of Character''. His PhD included a year of study at Cornell. Rawls taught at Princeton until 1952 when he received a [[Fulbright Fellowship]] to [[Christ Church, Oxford|Christ Church]] at [[Oxford University]], where he was influenced by the liberal political theorist and historian [[Isaiah Berlin]] and the legal theorist [[H. L. A. Hart]]. After returning to the United States, he served first as an assistant and then associate professor at [[Cornell University]].

In the fall of 1953 Rawls became an assistant professor at [[Cornell University]], joining his mentor [[Norman Malcolm]] in the Philosophy Department. Three years later Rawls received tenure at [[Cornell University|Cornell]]. During the 1959–60 academic year, Rawls was a visiting professor at Harvard, and he was appointed in 1960 as a professor in the humanities division at MIT. Two years later, he returned to Harvard as a professor of philosophy, and he remained there until reaching mandatory retirement age in 1991.

In 1962, he achieved a tenured position at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]]. That same year, he moved to [[Harvard University]], where he taught for almost forty years and where he trained some of the leading contemporary figures in moral and political philosophy, including [[Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach]], [[Thomas Nagel]], [[Allan Gibbard]], [[Onora O'Neill, Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve|Onora O'Neill]], [[Adrian Piper]], [[Arnold Davidson]], [[Elizabeth S. Anderson]], [[Christine Korsgaard]], [[Susan Neiman]], [[Claudia Card]], [[Rainer Forst]], [[Thomas Pogge]], [[T. M. Scanlon]], [[Barbara Herman]], [[Joshua Cohen (philosopher)|Joshua Cohen]], [[Thomas E. Hill (academic)|Thomas E. Hill Jr.]], [[Gurcharan Das]], [[Andreas Teuber]], [[Henry S. Richardson]], [[Nancy Sherman]], [[Samuel Freeman (philosopher)|Samuel Freeman]] and [[Paul Weithman]]. He held the [[James Bryant Conant]] [[Harvard University Professor|University Professorship]] at Harvard.<ref>{{Cite web |last= |first= |date=2002-11-26 |title=John Rawls, Theorist on Justice, Is Dead at 82 {{!}} New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/26/us/john-rawls-theorist-on-justice-is-dead-at-82.html |access-date=2024-01-20 |website=New York Times |language=en-US }}</ref>

Rawls was, for a time, a member of the [[Mont Pèlerin Society]]. He was put forward for membership by [[Milton Friedman]] in 1968, and withdrew from the society three years later, just before his ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'' was published.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Offer |last2=Söderberg |first1=Avner |first2=Gabriel |title=The Nobel Factor: The Prize in Economics, Social Democracy, and the Market Turn |date=2016 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=88iXDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA272 |page=272 |publisher=[[Princeton University Press]] |isbn=9780691166032}}</ref>

===Later life===
Rawls rarely gave interviews and, having both a stutter (partially caused by the deaths of two of his brothers, who died through infections contracted from Rawls) and a "bat-like horror of the limelight," did not become a public intellectual despite his fame. He instead remained committed mainly to his academic and family life.<ref name=":2" />

In 1995, he had the first of several strokes, severely impeding his ability to continue to work. He was nevertheless able to complete ''[[The Law of Peoples]]'', the most complete statement of his views on international justice. Published in 2001 shortly before his death was ''[[Justice as Fairness: A Restatement]]'', a response to criticisms of ''[[A Theory of Justice]]''. Rawls died from heart failure at his home in [[Lexington, Massachusetts]], on November 24, 2002, at age 81.<ref name = Martin/> He was buried at the [[Mount Auburn Cemetery]] in Massachusetts. He was survived by his wife, four children, and four grandchildren.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/12/john-rawls-influential-political-philosopher-dead-at-81-2/ | title=John Rawls, influential political philosopher, dead at 81 | date=December 5, 2002 | access-date=June 25, 2018 | archive-date=July 20, 2019 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190720034805/https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2002/12/john-rawls-influential-political-philosopher-dead-at-81-2/ | url-status=live }}</ref>