The veil of ignorance
Design a society without knowing who you will be in it: rich or poor, healthy or sick, which gender, which race. What rules would you choose?
- Reading time
- 4 min
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Branch
- Ethics
- First posed
- John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971; anticipated by John Harsanyi, 1953
The setup
Imagine you are about to be born into a society, but you do not yet know anything about your place in it. You do not know whether you will be rich or poor, talented or not, healthy or disabled, male or female, or which race, religion or social class you will belong to. You do not even know what your values or ambitions will be.
Now, from behind this veil of ignorance, you and others must agree on the basic rules of the society: how rights, opportunities, wealth and power will be distributed. Whatever you choose, you will have to live with, in whatever position you turn out to occupy.
John Rawls called this hypothetical situation the original position, and argued in A Theory of Justice (1971) that the principles chosen there are the principles of justice. The veil forces impartiality. You cannot rig the rules in your own favour, because you do not know which position is yours.
Why it matters
A Theory of Justice is widely regarded as the most important work of political philosophy of the twentieth century. The veil of ignorance gave people a vivid way to test whether a rule is fair: would you accept it if you did not know whether it would benefit or burden you?
The question is practical. Debates about taxation, healthcare, education and welfare often turn on exactly this: what would a fair society owe those who end up in the worst positions through no fault of their own?
Key terms
- Original positionRawls' imagined situation in which people choose principles of justice from behind a veil of ignorance.
- Veil of ignoranceRawls' device for fairness: choosing the rules of society without knowing what position you would occupy in it.
- Difference principleRawls' principle that social and economic inequalities are just only if they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.
- Social contractThe idea that political authority and moral rules can be justified as what free and equal people would agree to.
- MaximinA rule for choosing under uncertainty: pick the option whose worst possible outcome is better than the worst outcome of every alternative.
The positions
Rawls: justice as fairness
Behind the veil, rational people would choose equal basic liberties for all, fair equality of opportunity, and inequalities only if they benefit the least advantaged.
Utilitarian choice
Behind the veil, a rational person would choose the society with the highest average wellbeing, since they have an equal chance of being anyone.
Entitlement, not design
Justice is not about choosing a pattern of distribution. It is about whether people acquired and transferred their holdings fairly.
The veil removes too much
People behind the veil, stripped of every attachment and value, are not real people. Principles chosen by such abstract selves cannot guide real communities.
Arguments and objections
Rawls: justice as fairness
- Best argument
- Since you might end up in the worst position, and the stakes are your whole life, Rawls argued it would be rational to choose the rules that make the worst possible position as good as possible (a strategy called maximin). You would protect basic liberties first, then insist that any inequality of wealth or power be justified by its benefits to those at the bottom. This is the difference principle.
- Strongest objection
- Why be so cautious? Maximin is rational only if you are extremely averse to risk. Someone might prefer a society with a slightly worse bottom and a much better average, betting that they will probably not end up at the bottom.
- The reply
- Rawls argued that the choice is unlike ordinary gambles: it is made once, for a whole life, with no knowledge of probabilities, and the worst outcomes could be catastrophic. In such conditions, caution is reasonable.
Utilitarian choice
- Best argument
- John Harsanyi, who used a similar thought experiment before Rawls, argued that if you have an equal chance of occupying any position, rationality requires maximising your expected wellbeing, which means maximising average wellbeing. This leads to a form of utilitarianism, not to Rawls's principles.
- Strongest objection
- Average utilitarianism could allow some people to be terribly off if enough others are very well off. Rawls argued that this fails to take seriously 'the distinctness of persons': one person's suffering is not cancelled by another person's gain.
Entitlement, not design
- Best argument
- Robert Nozick, Rawls's Harvard colleague, argued that any fixed pattern of distribution would be upset by people's free choices. If millions freely pay to watch a great basketball player, he becomes rich; what is unjust about that? Justice, on Nozick's entitlement theory, depends on history: on how holdings came about, not on who ends up with what.
- Strongest objection
- Real holdings have a history full of theft, conquest and coercion. Nozick accepted that past injustice requires rectification, but critics argue that this undermines the case against redistribution.
The veil removes too much
- Best argument
- Communitarians such as Michael Sandel argued that Rawls's 'unencumbered self' is an illusion. We are partly constituted by our families, communities and traditions. Justice must start from shared understandings of the good, not from a choice made by no one in particular.
- Strongest objection
- Rawls replied that the veil is a device of representation, not a theory of the self. It expresses fairness, not a claim that people are actually detached from their communities.
Who argued what
- Rawls: justice as fairness John Rawls, Thomas Scanlon
- Utilitarian choice John Harsanyi, John Stuart Mill
- Entitlement, not design Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek
- The veil removes too much Michael Sandel, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Walzer
Where you stand
Which idea of a just society is closest to yours?
In surveys
Choose one to see how people answer.
Variations
The cake
The simplest version: one person cuts a cake, and the other chooses first. The cutter, not knowing which slice they will get, cuts evenly. The veil applies the same logic to a whole society.
Behind the veil, today
Experiments by Norman Frohlich and Joe Oppenheimer asked groups to choose distribution rules behind an experimental veil. Most groups chose neither Rawls's difference principle nor pure average maximisation, but maximising the average subject to a guaranteed minimum floor.
Future generations
What if you did not know which generation you would be born into? The veil can be extended to questions of climate change, debt and resource use, asking how much present generations owe future ones.
Go deeper
Rawls's two principles
In their final form, Rawls's principles are: first, each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of basic liberties compatible with the same liberties for all; second, social and economic inequalities must be attached to positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity, and must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. The first principle has priority: liberties may not be traded for economic gains.
Schools of thought: Kantian ethics
Related ideas
Further reading and sources
- EncyclopediaStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Original Position
- WikipediaVeil of ignorance
- WikipediaA Theory of Justice
- SurveyPhilPapers Survey, 2020 · question: Political philosophy; about 1,785 professional philosophers; accept or lean toward
- BookA Theory of Justice, John Rawls
- BookAnarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick
- BookJustice: What's the Right Thing to Do?, Michael Sandel
Open questions
- Which rules of your own society would you choose if you did not know your place in it?
- How much risk would you take on being at the bottom for a better chance at the top?
- Can anyone really reason without knowing who they are?