Explain how Rawls used the liberal and egalitarian perspective to develop his concept of distributive justice. (Answer in 250 words)

- Explain how Rawls used the liberal and egalitarian perspective to develop his concept of distributive justice. (Answer in 250 words)
Introduction
Rawls's achievement in A Theory of Justice is a synthesis. He retains liberalism's contractarian method and its priority of individual liberty, then imports a strongly egalitarian standard into the distribution of everything else.

Body

1. A liberal method: The original position and the veil of ignorance are Kantian and contractarian. Denied knowledge of class, talent, race and conception of the good, rational choosers pick principles nobody can rig in advance.
2. An anti-utilitarian foundation: Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. The right is prior to the good, which is what makes it deontological liberalism.
3. Liberty lexically first: Equal basic liberties may be restricted only for the sake of liberty itself. No quantity of economic gain can purchase away a citizen's political freedom.
4. The egalitarian turn: Fair equality of opportunity goes beyond careers open to talents, because both natural endowment and social starting point are morally arbitrary. Talents are treated as a common asset.
5. The difference principle: Inequalities are just only where they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, a maximin rule applied to primary goods and to the basic structure, which Rawls later says points to a property-owning democracy rather than welfare capitalism.

Conclusion
The lexical ordering makes him a liberal first and an egalitarian second, which is why Nozick found him too redistributive while Sen and Okin found him too abstract about capability and the family. That contested middle ground is exactly the position he set out to occupy.