A Study Of John Rawls' S Religious Thought

Rawls’ s undergraduate thesis,“A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith:An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community”(1942), with a thesis which can be seen as Rawls’ s personal cofession, that is,“On My Religion”,was edited and published by his student Thomas Nagel seven years after his death. Together with the newly publishment of “The Collected Papers of John Rawls”, included “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”and “Politics, Religion and Common Good”which is an interview of John Rawls by the magazine Commonweal, are the main literature for the study of John Rawls’ s religious thought and attitude. This paper firstly analyses the Young Rawls’ s Christian theology thought in the context of Neo-Orthodox theology movement;secondly, elaborating how the Young Rawls’ s Christian theology thought to influence the main concepts and ideas expressed in his mature book “A Theory of Justice”, which is a representative ethic work in the 20 th century, and I will further discuss in this part whether the religious believer could and in what possible way to accept these main concepts and ideals;thirdly, elaborating John Rawls’ s religious attidute presented in the book “Political Liberalism”, discussing why Rawls went toward to this attitude and its significance, I will also discuss that the religious believers how to accept it;finally, illustrating overall that the pursuit of the social community or the well-ordered society tirelessly is the mian reason for Rawls to treat religious belief differently and sincerely in the different periods. Therefore, this paper treat the “social community” which has been described as the “well-ordered society”since ‘A Theory of Justice’ as a writing clue to explore John Rawls’ s religious thought and attitude combined with the different circumstances he lives.