The Veil of Ignorance
Choosing principles of justice from behind a veil
First published: J. Rawls, *A Theory of Justice* (1971), §§3–4, 24.
What principles of justice would you choose if you didn't know who in society you would be?
Rawls's thought experiment asks: imagine designing the basic structure of society from behind a "veil of ignorance" that strips you of all knowledge of who you will be — your class, race, talents, conception of the good. Self-interested rational agents in this "original position," Rawls argued, would converge on two principles: (1) equal basic liberties for all, and (2) social and economic inequalities arranged to benefit the least advantaged. The case is the founding document of late-twentieth-century political philosophy: libertarians (Nozick) and communitarians (Sandel, MacIntyre, Taylor) define themselves in part by what they reject in it. Most modern democratic theory descends, agreeing or disagreeing, from this thought experiment.
Formulation
Behind veil: ignorance of one's position, talents, race, gender, conception of the good. Available: general knowledge of economics, psychology, social structure. Task: choose principles of justice. Rawls's claim: rational parties choose maximin (best worst-case outcome), yielding his two principles.
Dimensions Engaged
Observer
Engages Observer · Knowledge Extent in a moral mode: by systematically *removing* knowledge that biases moral reasoning, the veil purports to isolate principles to which all could rationally consent.
Responses — How Schools Engage
Affirms / takes the bait 1
A modern reconstruction of the Kantian moral law: principles to which any rational agent could consistently consent. The veil dramatises the categorical-imperative test.
Denies / rejects the premise 3
Liberation theology denies the abstraction: justice is reasoned from the concrete position of the oppressed, not from a hypothetical neutral standpoint that erases the structural realities at issue.
The unencumbered self of the veil is a metaphysical fiction; persons are constituted by their attachments and traditions, and cannot reason about justice while pretending otherwise (MacIntyre, Sandel, Taylor — clustered here with the broader communitarian-postmodern critique).
The veil asks us to choose without the particularity that gives choice its meaning. Justice imagined from no one's standpoint is justice imagined for no one in particular.
Reframes the question 2
A useful heuristic for surfacing partiality, but principles of justice must ultimately be answerable to actual democratic experimentation, not to idealised hypothetical choice (Dewey, Rorty).
The "rational" choice behind the veil depends on controversial assumptions about risk aversion and maximin reasoning. Empirical game-theoretic and evolutionary analyses do not consistently support Rawls's conclusions.
Related Experiments
Experiments engaged by an overlapping set of schools — likely to surface the same fault lines.
Further reading
- Rawls, *A Theory of Justice* (1971; rev. 1999)
- Nozick, *Anarchy, State, and Utopia* (1974)
- Sandel, *Liberalism and the Limits of Justice* (1982)
Related Historical Debates
Debates that share dimensions and/or aligned schools with this experiment.
Personas Most Aligned With This Experiment
Ranked by total declared-influence weight in the schools that respond to this experiment.
Works Most Aligned With This Experiment
Ranked by total declared-influence weight in the schools that respond to this experiment.
Related Contemporary Dilemmas
Dilemmas that engage the same dimensions as this experiment.