The Philosophy Book

294

THE PRINCIPLES OF

JUSTICE ARE CHOSEN

BEHIND A VEIL

OF IGNORANCE

JOHN RAWLS (1921–2002)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Political philosophy

APPROACH

Social contract theory

BEFORE

c.380 BCE Plato discusses the

nature of justice and the just

society in The Republic.

1651 Thomas Hobbes sets out

a theory of social contract in

his book Leviathan.

1689 John Locke develops

Hobbes’s theory in his Second

Treatise of Government.

1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau

writes The Social Contract.

His views are later adopted

by French revolutionaries.

AFTER

1974 Robert Nozick criticizes

Rawls’ “original position” in

his influential book Anarchy,

State, and Utopia.

2001 Rawls defends his views

in his last book, Justice as

Fairness: A Restatement.

I

n his book A Theory of Justice,

first published in 1971, political

philosopher John Rawls argues

for a re-evaluation of justice in

terms of what he calls “justice as

fairness.” His approach falls into

the tradition known as social

contract theory, which sees the rule

of law as a form of contract that

individuals enter into because it

yields benefits that exceed what

they can attain individually. Rawls’

version of this theory involves a

thought experiment in which people

are made ignorant of their place in

society, or placed in what he calls

the “original position” in which the

social contract is made. From this

Rawls establishes principles of

justice on which, he claims, all

rational beings should agree.

The original position

Imagine that a group of strangers is

marooned on a desert island, and

that, after giving up hope of being

rescued, they decide to start a new

society from scratch. Each of the

survivors wants to further their

own interests, but each also sees

that they can only do so by working

together in some way—in other

words, by forming a social contract.

The question is: how do they go

We all want to further

our own interests.

To do this we need

to work together.

This requires

rules.

Rules that are fair and just

must apply equally to all,

ignoring social status.

The principles of justice

should be chosen behind

a veil of ignorance.