Category: society-and-justice
Type: thought experiment
Associated thinker(s): John Rawls
Original publication or approximate period: A Theory of Justice (1971); later refinements
Difficulty: Intermediate
Themes: justice, impartiality, social contract
Related experiments: Wilt Chamberlain’s Earnings; Dworkin’s Resource Auction; The State of Nature
Imagine representatives choosing principles for the basic institutions of a society. A veil of ignorance blocks knowledge of their own class, talents, religion, gender, and particular conception of a good life. They still know general facts about social cooperation and human needs. They must choose fair terms without tailoring the rules to a known personal advantage.
The original position is the whole modeled choice situation; the veil is one of its central constraints. They are therefore covered together rather than counted as two independent experiments. The parties’ information, motivations, and available alternatives are specified parts of the argument, not details one may change silently.
Which principles would be justifiable to free and equal people when bargaining advantages from personal circumstances are removed?
The device tests fairness by changing the standpoint from which institutions are assessed. It also makes visible a methodological issue: a hypothetical agreement can carry argumentative weight only if the conditions used to construct it are themselves defensible. Impartiality is a reason to examine those conditions, not a guarantee of one inevitable answer.
Rawlsian response: the parties choose protections for basic liberties and fair opportunities, with social and economic inequalities governed by further requirements, including benefit to the least advantaged.
Expected-utility criticism: different assumptions about probabilities and decision rules can support different choices. Merely hiding identity does not by itself entail every part of Rawls’s conclusion.
Model criticism: a critic can challenge whose interests are represented, what information is removed, or whether agreement under artificial constraints supplies the right test. These criticisms engage the model’s justification rather than presuming that participants selfishly know their future class.
The parties are not ignorant of everything. Nor is Rawls simply recommending equal income or teaching that maximin is the correct rule for every risky decision. The model concerns principles governing a basic social structure, not an instruction to decide every personal choice behind a literal curtain.
Thinner veils, different social-contract models, and alternative accounts of rational choice test the construction. Classroom exercises can ask students to propose principles and then disclose roles. That activity illustrates the device but is not empirical proof of Rawls’s argument.
The retrieved SEP original-position entry supports the model and qualifications. A Theory of Justice is the associated original publication, while later refinements are not treated as identical to its first formulation. The entry does not duplicate the veil as a second article.
Research check: 2026-10-30. References above were retrieved for the support described; this is an original educational explanation, not a substitute for the primary texts. Additional speculative comparisons are teaching prompts, not established historical variations.