ABSTRACT

Rawls proposes principles of justice intended to govern the basic structures of a well-ordered society, principles which, he argues, would be chosen by reasonable and rational persons under certain specified conditions-conditions simulated in the original position. In Raw ls’s constructivism,134 the original position (henceforth referred to as OP) is a hypothetical position from which representatives of citizens in a wellordered society choose the principles of justice that they want their basic social structures (that is, their laws and institutions) to embody. The participants in the OP are all modeled on equal and free moral persons, who are rational and mutually disinterested. They know general facts about human nature and society but are ignorant of their own station in life, their “ conceptions of the good,” and “their special psychological propensities” (1971, 11). This veil o f ignorance over participants in the OP should ensure that the choice of principles is unaffected by knowl­ edge of one’s own place in society, one’s own vision of the good, or one’s particular psychological proclivities; it should guarantee that par­ ties choose principles impartially and, therefore, fairly. Parties in the OP are representatives of mutually disinterested rational agents concerned primarily with their own well-being. The constraints of the OP reflect fair terms of social cooperation to which rational persons could agree.