Rawls: Justice as Fairness

Abstract

Abstract One way of thinking about justice is to imagine a social contract in which people come together to choose the basic principles that will govern their society. Would the principles chosen in this way be fair? Not necessarily. Some parties to the social contract might be stronger, or wealthier, or savvier than others. Some might take advantage of a superior bargaining position. Now try to imagine a social contract that would not be subject to these contingencies. This is what John Rawls (1921–2002) invites us to imagine in his book A Theory of Justice (1971). According to Rawls, the way to think about justice is to ask what principles would be chosen by people who came together behind a “veil of ignorance” that temporarily deprived them of any knowledge about where they would wind up in society. Only a hypothetical contract such as this, carried out in an original position of equality, would produce principles of justice untainted by differences of bargaining power or knowledge.