>It is difficult to transport oneself back to the
>situation where Rawls found moral and political
>philosophy in America in the early 50s. ... To the
>extent that anyone discussed right and wrong, all
>there was was utilitarianism. There was no political
>philosophy, zip, zero, nothing. There was Isaiah
>Berlin, but he felt he had to leave philosophy to do
>political philosophy...
This point needs emphasising, though: there was a lot of political philosophy around before "Theory of Justice" was published -- it just wasn't going on inside a lot of Anglo-American academic Philosophy departments.
Between the end of the war and the publication of "Theory" in 1971, any number of books and articles of political philosophy were published by scholars like Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Hannah Arendt, Karl Popper, Ernest Barker, Leo Strauss, Alexandre Kojeve, C B Macpherson, Friedrich von Hayek, Louis Althusser, Jurgen Habermas, and so on.
Analytic philosophers (in their Philosophy Departments) often don't like these writers very much -- but they do need to be remembered any time someone makes the "political philosophy was dead before Rawls came along" claim -- as Rawlsians often do.
"A Theory of Justice" is a good enough book that it doesn't need this particular myth to sustain its reputation.
But if I carry on like this, I'll turn into Bhikhu Parekh.
Chris