The Original Position in José Saramago's Blindness

Abstract

Following the tradition of social contract theories of the early modern age, John Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, renewed the notion of the “original position,” that is, a set of behavioral assumptions from which general principles of justice are deduced. José Saramago's novel Blindness enriches Rawls's normative theory by adding behavioral assumptions that help clarify some of the problems raised by the theory's critics and enhance its application to social and political settings.