Discussing the philosophical significance of his theory, Rawls writes thefollowing:In the history of democratic thought two contrasting ideas of societyhave a prominent place: one is the idea of society as a fair system ofsocial cooperation between citizens regarded as free and equal; theother is the idea of society as a social system organized so as toproduce the most good over all its members [...]Between these two traditions there is a basic contrast: the idea ofsociety as a fair system of social cooperation is quite naturallyspecified so to include the idea of equality [...] By contrast, the idea ofsociety organized to produce the most expresses a maximizing andaggregative principle political justice. (Justice as Fairness 96)In these passages Rawls describes the point of his philosophy as:

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