John Rawls

These are mass-produced books: cheap to manufacture, produced in relatively large numbers, inexpensive to acquire (unless, perhaps, they are your course texts). What elevates them to the status of “rare,” and worthy of the best measures to preserve them, is the person who collected them, political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002).

It has been written that paper is how the dead talk to us, and how we talk to them. In the pages of these books we observe one of the great minds of the 20th century in dialogue with historical figures, among them, in these photos, Abraham Lincoln and Aristotle.

Tufts Professor of Philosophy Erin Kelly was John Rawls’s student at Harvard. It is to her, and to Mardy Rawls, wife of John Rawls, that Tisch Library owes thanks for this collection of books which allow us into the philosopher’s study, where we may eavesdrop on the conversation there.