Key Arguments

• Rawls says the original position is designed “to set up a fair procedure so that any principles agreed to will be just,” explicitly invoking “the notion of pure procedural justice as a basis of theory.”
• He identifies the problem the veil is meant to solve: “Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage.”
• His solution is to strip away particular information: “I assume that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance. They do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations.”
• By excluding knowledge of how principles bear on any given person, the procedure prevents parties from tailoring principles to their own advantage and thus models fairness at the level of choice of principles themselves.
• Rawls later reiterates that without these informational restrictions we would be left only with a vacuous formula—“justice is what would be agreed to”—and no substantive content, indicating that the veil is essential to getting determinate, just principles rather than a disguised registration of contingent advantages.

Source Quotes

The idea of the original position is to set up a fair procedure so that any principles agreed to will be just. The aim is to use the notion of pure procedural justice as a basis of theory.

The idea of the original position is to set up a fair procedure so that any principles agreed to will be just. The aim is to use the notion of pure procedural justice as a basis of theory. Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage.

The aim is to use the notion of pure procedural justice as a basis of theory. Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage. Now in order to do this I assume that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance.

Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage. Now in order to do this I assume that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance. They do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations.

Now in order to do this I assume that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance. They do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations. 74 It is assumed, then, that the parties do not know certain kinds of particular facts.

Key Concepts

• The idea of the original position is to set up a fair procedure so that any principles agreed to will be just.
• The aim is to use the notion of pure procedural justice as a basis of theory.
• Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific contingencies which put men at odds and tempt them to exploit social and natural circumstances to their own advantage.
• I assume that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance.
• They do not know how the various alternatives will affect their own particular case and they are obliged to evaluate principles solely on the basis of general considerations.

Context

Opening paragraphs of §24, where Rawls introduces the veil of ignorance as the distinctive informational constraint that makes the original position an instance of pure procedural justice and explains its role in cancelling arbitrary contingencies.