Defense of the Original Position

Abstract

In Chap. 5, I argue that metaphysical objections to Rawls’s characterization of the person in the “original position” are unsuccessful. I explain the original position, which is a hypothetical decision procedure in which a person who is subject to certain unusual constraints is asked to select the principles she would like to govern her society. The unusual constraints are that, on the one hand, the person is deprived of almost all knowledge of herself, such as knowledge of her gender, race, and socio-economic status and, on the other hand, the person is supposed to have knowledge that people may not have, such as knowledge about the laws of psychology, the basis of social organization, and principles of economic theory. Critics have taken this characterization of the person implicitly to rely on a metaphysical conception of personal identity that is inconsistent with a conception of persons as socially constituted. I argue that it is false that the characterization of the person in the original position relies on any metaphysical conception of personal identity, and, for this reason, these objections fail. The discussion of the original position brings Rawls’s conception of political identity into sharper relief. Rawls claims that this conception is a normative conception of identity. For this reason, a clearer understanding of Rawls’s conception of political identity paves the way for understanding the normative criticisms of that conception.