%0 Journal Article %T John Rawls¡¯s Appropriation of Adam Smith %A David Johnston %J DoisPontos %D 2010 %I Universidade Federal do Paran¨¢, Universidade Federal de S?o Carlos %X In spite of the shortage in Rawls¡¯s work of references to Smith¡¯s later and even more famous book, the ideas and arguments of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations are central to Rawls¡¯s theory of justice. This article intends 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 The Wealth of Nations supply Rawls with the central question he attempts to answer in his theory of justice. They also supply him with a key component of his answer to that question, a component without which Rawls¡¯s answer to the question would have 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 as Kant¡¯s contributions and are more important to Rawls¡¯s theory than the contributions of any thinker other than Kant (with the possible exception of Sidgwick). %K J. Rawls %K A %K Smith %K Theory of justice %U http://ojs.c3sl.ufpr.br/ojs2/index.php/doispontos/article/view/20170/13341