A Theory of Justiceas had tremendous, far-reaching impact on twentieth-century philosophical thought. Rawls is widely credited with breathing new life into the field of political philosophy, which, by the 1950s, had nearly ceased to develop in any significant direction. Victoria Davion and Clark Wolf, in The Idea of a Political Liberalism (2000) assert, "By any account, the appearance of [A Theory of Justice] was a turning point for political philosophy," adding that it "could not have been more cataclysmic in its effect on the field." As Rex Martin avers, in Rawls and Rights(1985), A Theory of Justice "is widely regarded as an important and seminal treatise on some of the main topics of moral and political philosophy." Rawls's work also had an important effect on liberal thought. As A. P. Rao asserts, in Three Lectures on John Rawls (1981), "Rawls not only brought some freshness into the...