First UK edition. 8vo. xv, [1], 607, [1] pp. Original blue cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, dust jacket (thin strip of heavy tape-staining to endpapers, contents otherwise clean and unmarked; jacket worn with some chipping and creasing at extremities, just about a very good copy overall). Oxford, At the Clarendon Press, 1972.
A modern philosophical masterpiece. "It would be hard to overstate the importance of A Theory of Justice to political and ethical philosophy. Whatever their many disagreements, virtually all contemporary political philosophers recognise the centrality of John Rawls’s great 1971 work to their field. Brian Barry calls it 'the watershed that divides the past from the present', and Robert Nozick’s assertion remains as true today as it was in 1974: 'Political philosophers now must either work within Rawls’ theory or explain why not'." (Mandle, Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice': An Introduction, pp. 3-4).
