John Rawls and the Original Position Essay - 6441 Words.
Essay on John Rawls: “Original Position” 1137 Words 5 Pages The general concept of Rawls “original position” is that all social “Primary Good” should be distributed equally to individuals in a society, unless an unequal distribution favors those less fortunate.
Rawls believed that the social contract be created from an original position in which everyone decides on the rules for society behind a veil of ignorance. In this essay, it will be argued that the veil of ignorance is an important feature of the original position. First, the essay will describe what the veil of ignorance is.
In A Theory of Justice, Rawls begins with the statement that, ”Justice is the first virtue of social institution,” meaning that a good society is one structured according to principals of justice. Rawls asserts that existing theories of justice, developed in the field of philosophy.
A key problem to Rawls is to show how such principles would be universally adopted and here the work borders on general ethical issues. He introduces a theoretical “veil of ignorance” in which all the “players” in the social game would be placed in a situation which is called the “original position”.
Rawls differed from the utilitarian view by suggesting that rational people would choose their own utilities based on the original position of all people. The chief critic of Rawls was a Harvard professor named Nozick, who proposed that the view of Rawls must be enforced by the government in the form of laws enforcing voluntary exchange.
Unique to Rawls’s original position, members of society are placed under a “veil of ignorance” that prevents them from knowing their individual positions in society.
This essay aims at examining Rawls’ original position as the central feature of his theory of justice. In examining this concept, the essay will expose the theory, assess how the original position supports justice as fairness, and analyze some criticisms leveled against the concept.
The general concept of Rawls “original position” is that all social “Primary Good” should be distributed equally to individuals in a society, unless an unequal distribution favors those less fortunate. Rawls call “the situation of ignorance about your own place in society the “original position (242).”.
The veil of ignorance is a significant part of Rawls’ original position. This gives Rawls’ concept of original position because there are no biases or judgmental decisions made and everyone in that society seeks the benefit of each other.
The original position being supposedly blind to gender and tradition, and so, it seems, are the principles of justice Rawls derives. However, Susan Okin has several arguments against Rawls’s theories, or in favor of adjustments to his theories.
The original position (“OP”) is an essential component of John Rawls’s account of justice as presented in his seminal A Theory of Justice. In this essay, I claim that 1) Rawls OP is (at least in societies shaped by an individual conception of personhood) more useful for theorising about a just society than utilitarianism; 2) the OP fails (like other methodologies) to be useful for.
Original position The original position (OP) is a hypothetical situation developed by American philosopher John Rawls as a thought experiment to replace the imagery of a savage state of nature of prior political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes.
Throughout his writing, Rawls describes the original position and conveys how it would lead to agreement on two principles of justice. The first principle that he describes says that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
