This is made in philosophy bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

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Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.

Not many contemporary thinkers achieve the prominence in their lifetime of having their name mutate into an adjective. But this happened to John Rules.

Many political philosophers are proud to call themselves Ralsian. Among academics, there's an extraordinary

degree of consensus that the most important work of political

philosophy from the second half of the last century was rules is a theory of justice

published in 1971. The book's influence has been felt well beyond the university campus.

Its radical claim that what matters most in society is the position of the worst off

has filtered through to politicians and policy makers.

Jonathan Wolf is professor of philosophy at University College London.

Jonathan Wolf, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Very nice to be back again.

We're going to focus on John Rawls' theory of justice, which is probably the most famous work written

in the 20th century of political philosophy.

Could you tell me a bit about John Rawls, who he was?

John Rawls was an American philosopher

who worked from the 1950s

until the end of the century, so long working life.

He concentrated on political philosophy for most of his life.

He began writing important papers in political philosophy in the late 1950s and never

...