As Ricoeur acknowledges, the publication of Rawls’s book, A Theory of Justice(TJ), in 1971 was a major event in the area of contemporary political philoso-phy. Ricoeur offers important comments on Rawls’s approach to justice. These commentaries are mainly based on a close reading of this book. This article focuses on such commentaries. They are at the same time glowing and critical. Ricoeur expresses his support to Rawls for his illuminating study of justice, seen as a virtue of institutions.
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The paper shows that, when dealing with social justice, it is necessary but not sufficient to consider the social evaluator as placed behind a veil of ignorance. Then, her judgements are conform to the moral principle of universalisation and thus are impartial. But the way such judgements should be modelled depends on the interpretation, whether utilitarian or Kantian, given to the universalisation principle. The article compares the utilitarian model of the impartial observer from Harsanyi with the Kantian model of the ignorant observer from Gajdos and Kandil. It defends the latter, which shows that, differently to what Rawls claimed, the maximin is not the unique rule of decision under ignorance. Classification JEL : B41, D60, D63

Sen opposes two approaches to social justice. The transcendental one deals with the question of a just society. The comparative approach is about ordering social alternatives. According to Sen, such approaches are exclusive. I discuss the argument and show that the approaches are complementary. The transcendental (or ideal) approach is necessary but needs to be extended with a derivative and comparative approach. Conversely, the comparative approach is necessary but needs some transcendental foundations. The two approaches contribute to the elaboration of a synthetic approach to social justice. Under the latter, the ethical foundations of social evaluations are made explicit. Classification JEL : B41 D60 D63