Veil of Ignorance
Also known as: Rawlsian Justice
Choose principles of justice without knowing your own position in society.
The Veil of Ignorance is the central thought experiment in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971), the most influential work in 20th-century political philosophy. Rawls asks readers to imagine an 'original position' in which rational parties choose principles to govern the basic structure of their society without knowing their own particular characteristics — class, race, gender, talents, conception of the good — that would bias them toward principles favoring their own position. Behind the veil, Rawls argues, parties would converge on two principles of justice, in lexical order: First, each person has equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties compatible with the same scheme for all; Second, social and economic inequalities are arranged so that they are both (a) attached to positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity, and (b) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle). The thought experiment operationalizes a Kantian commitment to impartiality and grounds principles of justice in what rational, mutually disinterested parties would choose under conditions of fair information. Rawls revised his framework substantially in Political Liberalism (1993), reframing it as a political rather than comprehensive moral conception. The Veil of Ignorance has been one of the most fertile philosophical devices of the past 50 years.
Core components
- Original position thought experiment
- Veil of Ignorance (parties don't know own characteristics)
- Two principles of justice (equal basic liberties
- fair equality of opportunity + difference principle)
- Lexical priority of liberty principle
- Maximin reasoning under uncertainty
- Difference principle (inequalities only justified if they benefit least-advantaged)
- Reflective equilibrium as background methodology
- Political Liberalism's later reframing
Primary use case
Political philosophy and theory of justice; foundation for substantial subsequent work in distributive justice, global justice, intergenerational justice; applied to taxation, healthcare allocation, and social policy debates; teaching framework for thinking about impartiality and fairness; influence well beyond academic philosophy into political and policy discourse.
Common criticisms
- Robert Nozick's libertarian critique in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) argued Rawls's conclusions presuppose end-state distributive thinking that ignores legitimate historical entitlements
- communitarian critique (Sandel, MacIntyre) argued the unencumbered self of the original position is a metaphysical fiction
- feminist critique (Susan Moller Okin, others) noted that Rawls's original framing assumed the family as outside justice
- G.A. Cohen argued Rawls's difference principle inadequately constrains personal incentive structures
- capabilities approach (Sen, Nussbaum) argued primary goods are inadequate for cross-person welfare comparison
- maximin reasoning behind the veil is contested as the right risk-attitude under genuine uncertainty
- the original position structure has been argued to smuggle in conclusions through the design of the choice situation.
Lineage
- Siblings
- Contractualism, Capability Approach