Welcome back to our module on Political Philosophy. In the previous lesson, we conducted a comparative analysis of the classic social contract theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. We saw how their different starting assumptions about human nature led them to justify radically different forms of government, from Hobbes's absolutism to Locke's limited constitutionalism and Rousseau's direct democracy. We also distinguished between the contractarian project of deriving politics from rational self-interest and the contractualist project of designing a state for already moral persons.
Today, we leap forward to the 20th century to examine one of the most influential works of modern political philosophy: John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. Rawls revives the social contract tradition, but with a new and ambitious goal. Instead of using the contract to justify the existence of the state, he uses it to answer a more fundamental question: What are the principles of justice that should govern the basic structure of a fair society?
This lesson will focus on the ingenious thought experiment Rawls designed to answer this question. Our learning outcome is to explain the purpose of his "original position" as a device for deriving principles of justice. We will dissect its architecture and see how it functions as a carefully calibrated procedure to ensure a fair outcome, a concept that should resonate with your experience in designing formal models and simulations.
1. The Need for a New Contract
The classical social contract theories faced significant challenges, particularly from the rise of utilitarianism, which argued that the goal of politics should be to maximize overall happiness, not to fulfill a hypothetical contract. Rawls, writing in the mid-20th century, sought to provide a compelling alternative to utilitarianism and to rejuvenate the social contract idea for a modern, pluralistic society.
To understand Rawls's project, it's helpful to see how he positions his work in response to the historical tradition.
14. John Rawls & The Principles of Justice
The video "John Rawls & The Principles of Justice" by Mark Thorsby provides an excellent overview of the intellectual landscape Rawls was engaging with.
Please watch the first part of the video, from the beginning to the end of the introduction. The lecturer discusses the challenges to traditional social contract theory from thinkers like Marx and Foucault, and especially the dominance of utilitarianism. Focus on his explanation of why Rawls felt a new, more robust theory of justice was needed.
As the video explains, Rawls saw that simply grounding government in a historical or hypothetical "state of nature" was no longer sufficient. He agreed with his predecessors that justice needed to be understood as an agreement between free and equal persons, but he believed the conditions of that agreement had to be conceptualized in a new way.
Rawls rejects the "state of nature" as the appropriate starting point for two main reasons. First, as we saw with Rousseau, the idea of a pre-social human is a questionable fiction; our rationality and morality are developed within society. Second, and more critically, starting with individuals who know their own circumstances (as in Locke's theory) allows biases to creep in. Socially powerful and wealthy parties can use their knowledge and threat advantage to negotiate terms that favor themselves.
To solve this, Rawls replaces the state of nature with a purely hypothetical thought experiment he calls the original position.
2. The Architecture of the Original Position
The original position is not a historical event but a "device of representation." Its purpose is to model a fair and impartial point of view from which to choose the fundamental principles of justice. Think of it as setting the initial conditions for a simulation designed to output fairness.
The concept is best introduced with a simple overview.
PHILOSOPHY - Political: Original Position [HD]
The video "PHILOSOPHY - Political: Original Position [HD]" from Wireless Philosophy gives a concise and clear explanation of the key components.
Please watch from the introduction of the thought experiment to the explanation of the agents' rationality. This will familiarize you with the core terminology: the original position, the veil of ignorance, and the nature of the parties.
As the video outlines, the original position has several key features that work together:
- The Task: The participants, or "parties," in the original position are tasked with choosing the principles of justice that will govern the "basic structure" of their society—its major political, social, and economic institutions.
- The Parties: The parties are conceived as rational and mutually disinterested.
- Rational means they aim to choose the most effective means to advance their interests.
- Mutually disinterested does not mean they are egoists in the Hobbesian sense. It means they are not motivated by envy or benevolence toward one another within the experiment. They are like trustees, each trying to secure the best possible outcome for the citizen they represent, without being concerned with how others fare.
- The Veil of Ignorance: This is the most famous feature of the original position and the crucial constraint that ensures impartiality.
Behind this "veil," the parties are deprived of all particular knowledge about themselves and their society. They do not know:
- Their race, gender, social class, or wealth.
- Their natural talents, intelligence, or strength.
- Their personal "conception of the good" (their moral, religious, or philosophical convictions and life goals).
- The specific circumstances of their society, such as its level of economic development or its political culture.
However, they are not completely ignorant. They do know general facts about human society given by the natural and social sciences: principles of economics, psychology, and political sociology. They understand that people have different life plans and that society operates under "circumstances of justice"—moderate scarcity and limited altruism.
The purpose of this "thick" veil of ignorance is to make it impossible for the parties to choose principles that would selfishly favor their own particular situation. Since you don't know if you will be rich or poor, brilliant or disabled, part of a majority or minority religion, you have a rational incentive to choose principles that are fair to everyone, especially the least well-off. It forces you to consider the system from every possible point of view.
3. The Original Position as a Formal Model
Given your background, the most powerful way to understand the original position is not as a narrative about hypothetical people, but as a formal model—a kind of algorithm or "reasoning machine." Rawls, who was well-versed in economic theory, designed the original position in a way that is highly analogous to the abstract models used in economics and the formal systems you are familiar with in physics and computer science.
A fascinating paper by David C. Coker explores this very idea, arguing that many philosophical critiques of Rawls miss the point by treating the original position as a depiction of a real person, rather than as the abstract, functional model it is intended to be.
Economic Modeling in Rawls: The Original Position
This paper from the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics provides a unique and insightful interpretation of Rawls's methodology.
Please read the entire paper. It's not long, and it's directly relevant to your background. As you read, focus on these key ideas: The comparison of the parties in the OP to the abstract agent homo economicus. The idea of the OP as a "machine designed to generate a certain sort of output." The distinction between a model as a stylized version of the world and a model as a closed "world unto itself." How viewing the OP as a model helps defend it against criticisms that its depiction of the person is "too thin" or unrealistic.
As Coker's paper masterfully argues, the seeming "unrealism" of the original position is not a bug; it is its central feature. Rawls is engaging in a process of radical abstraction to isolate the variable of fairness.
- Inputs: The "fair conditions of agreement" (the parties are free and equal) and "acceptable restrictions on reasons" (the veil of ignorance).
- Procedure: A process of rational choice, where "artificial persons" (not real people) select principles to maximize their share of "primary social goods"—all-purpose means like rights, opportunities, and income that are useful for any life plan.
- Output: The principles of justice.
Rawls called this "a kind of moral geometry." The goal is to construct a choice situation so precisely that the conclusion follows deductively from the premises. The purpose of the original position, then, is to function as a procedure that translates our considered intuitions about fairness into concrete principles of justice. This is what Rawls calls "pure procedural justice": a procedure that is so well-designed that any outcome it produces is guaranteed to be just, simply by virtue of having followed the procedure.
4. A Fair Choice Procedure
The final piece of the puzzle is understanding how this device guides choice. Because the parties are behind the veil of ignorance, they are choosing under conditions of extreme uncertainty. They have no basis for estimating the probabilities of ending up in any particular social position.
In this unique situation, Rawls argues that it is rational for the parties to use a conservative decision rule known as maximin. The maximin rule directs you to "maximize the minimum"—that is, to choose the alternative whose worst possible outcome is better than the worst possible outcome of any other alternative. You choose as if your worst enemy were going to assign you your place in society.
Why is this rational? Because the stakes are incredibly high. The choice is final and determines the entire framework of your life. It would be foolish to gamble with your fundamental rights and liberties for the chance of extra wealth, especially when you might end up in a position where you cannot pursue any of your goals. The maximin strategy ensures that even if you end up in the least advantaged position, your situation is still the best it could be compared to the alternatives.
Thus, the purpose of the original position is to constrain the problem of justice in such a way that a determinate, rational choice is possible. It models impartiality through the veil of ignorance and then uses the resulting uncertainty to justify a rational choice rule (maximin) that leads to principles that protect everyone, especially the most vulnerable.
Conclusion
In this lesson, we have unpacked the intricate design and purpose of John Rawls's original position. It stands as a monumental attempt to ground principles of justice in a hypothetical agreement that is both rational and fair.
- Key Takeaways:
- The original position is a hypothetical thought experiment that replaces the classical "state of nature." It is a device of representation, not a claim about history.
- Its most critical feature is the veil of ignorance, an epistemic constraint that eliminates personal biases by depriving the parties of particular knowledge about themselves and their society.
- This setup models a fair choice situation between free, equal, and rational parties whose task is to choose principles for the basic structure of society.
- The original position is best understood as a formal model or "reasoning machine," where carefully defined initial conditions and constraints are designed to yield a specific output—the principles of justice. This is an example of pure procedural justice.
- The uncertainty created by the veil of ignorance makes it rational for the parties to adopt a conservative choice strategy (maximin), which guides them toward fair principles.
Preview of the Next Lesson:
Now that we have a firm grasp of the machinery of the original position, our next lesson will examine its output. We will state and explain Rawls's two principles of justice—the Liberty Principle and the Difference Principle—and analyze his argument for why the parties in the original position would choose them over the principle of utility.