The Rationality of the "Original Position": A Defense

Abstract

In A Theory ofJustice,l John Rawls provides two separate sorts ofjustification for the principle ofjustice. First, he says that certain ofjustice are because they would be agreed to in an of (p. 21). In this initial situation which Rawls calls the Position-his reconstruction of traditional social contract theory-persons are viewed as as well as equal (p. 13). This is hardly a surprising stipulation for someone working within the social contract tradition who acknowledges that [t]he theory of justice is a part ... of the theory of choice (p. 16). More significantly, however, when Rawls says that principles of justice may be conceived as that would be chosen by persons, and that in this way conceptions of justice may be explained and justified (p. 16), he makes explicit his assertion of a necessary link between freedom, justice, and rationality. Any purported vindication of justice, then, which does not presuppose free persons judging impartially or from positions of equality must be deficient. To put it this way is to expose the implicit presuppositional core of Rawls's argument. Any rational choice of fundamental ethical or social must necessarily presuppose some sense of justice and freedom as its ground. According to the second sort of justification, the chosen in this Original Position are by noting their congruence with our ordinary, considered convictions (p. 19). This 'justification of fundamental reached by the individual's going back and forth, as it were, from his and their implications to his ordinary experience until there is the appropriate fit, Rawls refers to as reflective equilibrium (p. 20). In the explication and reconstruction of the Rawlsian argument which follow I shall pursue the first sort of justification for the following reason. Rawls would certainly not want to rest his argument on the