Life and Thought
David Johnston is a professor of political science at Columbia University and a scholar of political philosophy. He is best known for his book A Brief History of Justice, which traces the evolution of the concept of justice from antiquity to the present day.
David C. Johnston (born 1951) is a professor of political science at Columbia University in New York, where he previously held the Joseph Straus Chair in Political Philosophy. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1981 and taught at Yale University before joining Columbia.
Johnston specializes in political philosophy and the history of moral and political thought. His major works include The Rhetoric of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Cultural Transformation (1986), The Idea of a Liberal Theory (1994), and especially A Brief History of Justice (2011). In this latter book, he traces the evolution of the concept of justice from the ancient world to the modern era, focusing on the emergence of the idea of social justice. Johnston has also edited works on equality and critical editions of Hobbes's Leviathan.
His current research focuses on the theory and practice of justice, the idea of individual autonomy, and the history of social justice. Johnston is considered one of the recognized figures in contemporary political philosophy, and his works have been translated into several languages, including Arabic and Korean.