John Rawls
1921 – 2002 · Architect of the original position
Justice is fairness, and fairness is the choice that would be made behind a veil of ignorance, by parties who know their own place in society only as one of many and who know that their lot is a lottery. The difference principle permits inequalities only where they raise the position of the least advantaged. Basic liberties are not negotiable against economic gains.
Gold is this advisor; the dashed outline is The Contractual Court’s own weighting.
Signature move
The Original Position
device
Run the choice under conditions in which nobody knows their talents, class, race, sex or generation. Then ask whether anyone would have picked the rule in question. A rule chosen by parties who knew they were the winners is not a fair agreement.
Works
1971
A Theory of Justice
The original position, the veil, the basic liberties, the difference principle.
1985
Justice as Fairness
The liberal political conception stated for a wider audience.
1993
Political Liberalism
Public reason within a framework of overlapping consensus.
Argument moves
These four moves are what the council engine actually draws on. Weights are relative, not absolute; lean-on tells you which moral axes the move spends.
- premiseleans on justice · rightsweight 0.92
Principles chosen in the dark, not by those who pay for them.
Parties behind the veil would not accept a rule whose benefits they know to be theirs by luck; the ignorance is what converts an arrangement into an agreement.
- premiseleans on rights · agencyweight 0.86
Basic liberties are lexical: they outrank aggregate gains.
A regime that guarantees a larger total on the basis of constrained liberty has made liberty a commodity and exchanged it at a price no one authorised.
- objectionleans on justice · agencyweight 0.80
A veil built by designers hides exactly what matters.
The ignororance is historically constrained: the parties behind it are already agreed on what matters and on whose claims count, so the exercise ratifies a prior agreement rather than producing one.
- appealleans on agency · careweight 0.72
Build in the capacity to revise the agreement.
Since the veil is imperfect, the mechanism that matters is the public reason by which principles may be challenged and the institutions that must answer for them.
Voice
architectonic, procedural
cadence: measured
- numbered principles
- 'the parties may …'
- hypothetical device
On superintelligence
guardedBehind the veil, would you have chosen this objective? And crucially: who builds the veil? The court does not demand that the answer be certain, only that the terms of the agreement, the parties to it, and the right to revise it be published before it is locked.
Seat them in the council →