The Ethical Choice
Ethics: a factor of civilization that refers to justifiable standards of right and wrong in regards to what people ought to do. From rights to fairness, obligations to benefits to society, ethics is a far-reaching aspect of human life. Many have tired to define, capsulize, and summarize size ethics, each finding a different answer. Two people in particular to form a code of ethics are John Rawls and Ayn Rand. Rand and Rawls, two very distinct and contrasting individuals, each created unique ethical standpoints.
To begin, Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. After teaching herself to read, at the age of six, and falling in love with European literature, by age nine she had decided…show more content… Jown Rawls, given the name John Bordley Rawls, was born February 21st, 1921 in Baltimore, Maryland. As a young boy, Rawls attended schools in Baltimore until the age of fourteen. At fourteen Rawls was sent to the Kent School in Connecticut. Though Rawls regards his time spent there as an unhappy one, he was very good at academics, music and sports and graduated in 1939. Following graduation, Rawls attended Princeton University. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy in 1943. Soon after his college career, Rawls joined the army and served as an infantryman in the Pacific during World War II. During his time in service he toured New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan where her witnessed first hand the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima. The exposures to the Hiroshima aftermath lead to Rawls’ rejection of becoming an officer and his early leave from the military in 1946. With his discharge from the military, Rawls went back to Princeton and received his Ph.D. in 1950. During this time John met and married Margaret Fox. Rawls taught at philosophy at Princeton until 1952 when received a Fulbright fellowship to Oxford University, where he stayed for a year. After his return to the states in fall of 1953, he served as a teaching assistant and then three years later received tenure and became a associate professor at Cornell University. In 1960, he received a tenured position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a professor in the humanities division. Two years later, Rawls moved to teach as a tenured professor of philosophy at Harvard University where he remained until his retirement in 1991. John Rawls died on November 24, 2002. Even after his death he is still remembered for his innumerable tributes to philosophy in the twentieth