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According to John Rawls, what is the original position and what is the point of entering it?

According to John Rawls, the original position is not a place but rather a point of view. It is a point of view that is neutral and which takes into account the needs of all people, not just ourselves. The point of entering into the original position is so that we can create a set of just rules for our society.


In his book A Theory of Justice, Rawls tried to set out a way in which people could have a just society. He wanted both legal justice and economic justice. In order to accomplish this, he used the idea of the original position. The most important part of the original position is the “veil of ignorance.” Rawls said that people needed to mentally put themselves behind this veil of ignorance when they tried to critique their society’s laws. The word “ignorance” in this phrase refers to ignorance about one’s own personal characteristics and one’s own place in society. In other words, when we go to critique our society’s laws, we need to try to pretend that we do not know who we are. We do not know if we are male or female, rich or poor. We do not know what race or religion we are. We do not know how much schooling we have. We basically do not have any information about ourselves and our specific situation.


If we can successfully retreat behind the veil of ignorance, we will be able to come up with rules for our society that are truly just. If I do not know what sex I am, I will not make laws that favor one sex lest I be of the “wrong” sex. If I do not know how much money I have or my parents had, I will not set up laws or institutions that favor rich people lest I end up being poor. Instead, I will make laws that are as fair as they possibly can be to all people. I will want to do so because that will minimize the chances that I will find that I have made laws that are bad for me.


This is why we should enter the original position. If we can do so, we can critique our society’s laws and institutions objectively. We can look at those laws and institutions with clear eyes instead of seeing them through the filter of our own personal needs and wants. The original position, then, allows us to think about whether our society is truly just.

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