John Rawls's A Theory of Justice was the most significant single text in affluent political philosophy. Rawls followed the social-contract tradition of Hobbes and Locke. But he differed from them both in his context and in his philosophical ambitions. Hobbes and Locke were actively engaged in politics and public affairs. Rawls was a professional academic philosopher who spent almost his entire adult life at one university and had no direct involvement in public affairs. The development of his thought was driven more by internal philosophical tensions than by real-world events. Hobbes and Locke lived through civil war, the threat of foreign invasion and political unrest. Rawls's society had experienced all these in the past, and he himself served as a soldier in overseas campaigns in his youth. But by the ti me Rawls wrote his mature philosophical works, his society was stable and secure. That society was a wealthy affluent liberal democracy, very different from the semi-feudal monarchy inhabited by Hobbes and Locke. (Rawls lived in the same nation as Nozick. Indeed, they worked in the same university department.)

Although Hobbes and Locke were driven by immediate political concerns, they presented their foundational claims about human nature and natural rights – and their conclusions about sovereignty and its limits – as universal.