In Pursuit of a Just Society: Martin Luther King, Jr., and John Rawls

Journal of Religious Ethics 18 (2):57 - 77 (1990)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The social thought of Martin Luther King, Jr., creatively joins the particularity of the African-American freedom struggle, with its roots deep in black religious experience, to the universalist rhetoric of America's constitutive documents to produce an inclusive conception of justice for all in American society. This essay places King's thought in dialogue with that of the contemporary American moral philosopher John Rawls. Such conversation is important in both directions. Secular moral philosophers such as Rawls are challenged by King's thought to take account of the importance of religion in offering critical and constructive resources for public life, while King's project and the tradition of black Christian activism in which he stood are strengthened in their relation to public discourse by taking account of the challenge of a moral philosophy based on reason. This essay has two parts: an overview of King's vision of the just society and a comparative examination of this vision through selected elements of Rawls's theory of justice.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Martin Luther King, Jr., as Democratic Socialist.Douglas Sturm - 1990 - Journal of Religious Ethics 18 (2):79-105.
Martin Luther King: resistance, nonviolence and community.C. Anthony Hunt - 2004 - Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 7 (4):227-251.
Religious Belief in a Rawlsian Society.Richard L. Fern - 1987 - Journal of Religious Ethics 15 (1):33 - 58.
Public Reason/Private Religion? A Response to Paul J. Weithman.David Hollenbach - 1994 - Journal of Religious Ethics 22 (1):39 - 46.
Martin Luther King’s Debt to Hegel.John Ansbro - 1994 - The Owl of Minerva 26 (1):98-100.

Analytics

Added to PP
2011-05-29

Downloads
70 (#212,346)

6 months
4 (#319,344)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references