The book A Theory of Justice, with more than 400,000 words, is actually a collection of essays. Rawls said in the preface: "When I put forward" A Theory of Justice ",I tried to gather the ideas in my papers written in the past ten years and make them a coherent point of view." Rawls first published his first book, An Outline of Decision-making Procedures Applicable to Ethics, in 195 1. The basic idea is that justice is fairness (1958). Later, he successively wrote Concepts of Constitutional Freedom and Justice (1963), Sense of Justice (1963), Civil Resistance (1966) and Justice in Distribution (1967). 1969 rpm 1978. Rawls completed the sorting and processing of the whole book at the Advanced Research Center of Stanford University. In these 20 years, Rawls has been facing criticism and challenges from all sides, which prompted him to write one paper after another to improve his argument and refute the other's point of view. This process also makes The Theory of Justice very obscure and full of concepts. In order to explain a problem, Rawls often has to discuss and demonstrate it repeatedly. But his preface shows his thinking.

The theory of justice, as its name implies, is the study of justice. The concept of justice plays an important role in the history of human thought and social development. As Rawls said, justice is the first virtue of social system, just as truth is the first virtue of ideological system (section 1). Rawls regards the stipulation of justice view as the cornerstone of social development. The book A Theory of Justice is divided into three parts and nine chapters. The first part "Theory" discusses the definition, historical development, function, connotation and original state of justice. The second part "system" analyzes how to use the principle of justice determined in the first part to analyze the social and political system, economic system and civil life, which involves the specific level of people's social life. Here, the social and practical significance of Rawls' highly speculative view of justice is embodied in detail, as well as his solutions to contradictions, conflicts and civil strife in western society as a scholar. The third part "Purpose" discusses the topics in the field of ethics, involving a series of topics such as kindness, self-esteem, virtue, sense of justice, moral emotion, self-discipline and so on. This part is different from the first two parts, and the discussion and analysis seem to be slightly alienated from his principle of justice. In fact, Rawls thinks this part is very important, and if the last part of the argument is not considered, the theory of justice will be misunderstood (preface). Indeed, if a just principle wants to prevail in a society, the key lies in whether people can accept and believe it, which involves the formation of moral psychology and sense of justice. If people don't have a just psychological atmosphere and cultural environment, a just principle can't be accepted, which is what Rawls said: "Justice is the relative stability of fairness". Although the content of this part is not as novel as the first two parts, it is indispensable in the whole theory.