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I'm astonished at the tenor and number of negative reviews "A Theory of Justice" has garnered from the right. This is especially surprising because Rawls shares with American conservatives one fundamental principle: the inviolability of the individual. A "Theory of Justice" is a technical work aimed at professional philosophers, political scientists, and constitutional law specialists. Nevertheless, the book is understandable by laymen, provided it is read as what it is, i.e. a technical work of moral philosophy and not as a political agenda. Rawls's simple and plain style also makes this book a relatively easy read. I suspect that the rejection of Rawls by even the more thoughtful conservatives stems from a serious misunderstanding of utilitarianism, which Rawls savagely attacks from the start. Utilitarianism is the moral principle that the TOTAL welfare of a society is the highest value. In practice, the only measure of total welfare the government has is GDP, so that's what we maximize: GDP. This makes utilitarianism attractive to laissez-faire capitalist philosophies, and because Rawls attacks utilitarianism, both the left and the right imagine he is attacking markets, industry, and capitalism. The left have made him their angel, and so the right their demon. Rawls makes no attack on capitalism, only on utilitarianism. He asserts the inviolability of the individual as society's primary moral principle and demonstrates that this is incompatible with utilitarianism. For example, under utilitarianism, it makes sense to take Bob's heart, give it to Stan, and to give his lungs to John. You've saved two lives by sacrificing one, so society is on the whole better off with two members (Stan and John) rather than just one (Bob). This is obviously wrong and that's why we want to jettison this (im)moral philosophy. Another misconception is that Rawls does not accept inequality. This is false: Rawls accepts inequality provided that those at the bottom benefit from the inequality. For instance let's say John wants to become rich and so invents a pill that for ten dollars/person eliminates the risk of cancer in his hometown. John sells the pill and becomes rich and everyone is cured from cancer. John is better off than anyone else, but everyone else is better off than they would have been under an egalitarian society. Yet another misconception is that Rawls wants to establish a Utopian plan for a perfect society. He does not. Rawls is not a revolutionary trying to reinvent society; he is a theoritical moral philosopher, a professional academic researcher, who seeks to isolate the basic principles that define what we mean by "Justice". This is a fair goal and a valid program of study. Everyone wants a just society; after all does anyone campaign for an unjust or unfair society? But we disagree as to what we mean by "Justice". The real object of Rawls's work is to replace utilitarianism with a better concept of the social good, or of Justice. A Theory of Justice is his attempt at this. Vincent Poirier, Tokyo