John Rawls’s Appropriation of Adam Smith

In spite of the shortage in Rawls’s work of references to Smith’s later andeven more famous book, the ideas and arguments of An Inquiry into the Nature andCauses of the Wealth of Nations are central to Rawls’s theory of justice. This articleintends to show that without the ideas Smith proposed in The Wealth of Nations,Rawls would not have been able to write A Theory of Justice. Smith’s ideas in TheWealth of Nations supply Rawls with the central question he attempts to answer inhis theory of justice. They also supply him with a key component of his answer tothat question, a component without which Rawls’s answer to the question wouldhave looked sharply different. Smith’s contributions to the set of ideas on which Rawls drew to formulate his theory of justice are as important to that theory asKant’s contributions and are more important to Rawls’s theory than the contributionsof any thinker other than Kant (with the possible exception of Sidgwick).A Apropriação de Adam Smith por John Rawls Ainda que Rawls se refira poucas vezes a A. Smith, as idéias e argumentos de Ariqueza das nações são centrais para a sua teoria da justiça. Este artigo pretende mostrar que sem as idéias que Smith propõe em A riqueza das nações, Rawls não teria sido capaz de escrever A teoria da justiça As idéias de A riqueza das nações fornecem a Rawls a questão central da teoria da justiça. Elas também fornecem o componente chave da sua resposta a esta questão, sem o qual a resposta de Rawls teria sido sensivelmente diferente. As contribuições de Smith para o conjunto das idéias que instigam Rawls a formular a sua teoria da justiça são tão importantes quanto as contribuições de Kant e são mais importantes do que as contribuições de qualquer outro pensador além de Kant (talvez com a exceção de Sidgwick)