Rawls’s references to Wittgenstein in his published work are few and far apart. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein’s influence on Rawls’s thought, both directly and mediated through philosophers such as Norman Malcolm (one of Rawls’s first teachers of philosophy at Princeton in the 1940s, and with whom he later worked at Cornell in the 1950s) and Burton Dreben (his colleague for many years at Harvard), may be considered more substantial than initial impressions would suggest.

A Theory of Justice contains just two references to Wittgenstein, both of which occur in part iii of the book. In the discussion of the “Features of the Moral Sentiments” (TJ 420), Rawls characterizes his method of elucidating the main features of the moral sentiments “by considering the various questions that arise in trying to characterize them and the various feelings in which they are manifested” (TJ 420; see also CP 107) as being aWittgensteinian method, “applying to the concept of the moral feelings the kind of inquiry carried out by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations” (TJ 420 n.17; Wittgenstein 1953).