RAWLS' VEIL OF IGNORANCE

John Bordley Rawls was an American-born moral philosopher and ethicist. He was widely regarded as the most influential philosopher of the 20th century. Rawl worked tirelessly to create a philosophy that best creates a society that’s not formed by biased justice and intentions. He was able to successfully accomplish this by creating the well-known philosophy of the Veil of Ignorance.

The veil of ignorance relies on multiple assumptions. First, it is assumed that people who make decisions have freedom to a certain degree and individual motivations. These people are considered to be in the “Original Position”. However, Rawls also assumes that these people do not have total freedom to reconstruct society as they wish. Instead, they must follow a set of rules and guidelines already set out for them by Western philosophy. He does this so we can focus on current restrictions of justice in contrast to the infinite “what-if’s” society can pose.

After considering these carefully thought out assumptions, we can move to the actual solution, Rawls’ veil of ignorance. Rawls explains that we must forget things about ourselves and society before making decisions on our justice system.

More specifically, Rawl assumes that the Veil hides demographic facts from humans, including race, wealth, gender, strengths, and weaknesses. Rawl believes that humans do not deserve to know these facts when making decisions and instead rely on luck. Because Rawl removed the privilege of knowing what demographic one is, it is impossible for said person to discriminate against a group as they could potentially be a part of that group when they re-enter society. This coerces justice and regulations to be made with consideration to everyone in society. Thus, with the veil of ignorance it’s easier to implement a more just system because human selfishness is counteracted by the necessity of considering all members of society.