In-Class Rawls Group Work

Work

Paper Details:

Rawls ‘in-class’ work

Imagine that you and your fellow citizens get together in order to decide how to run your society (the ‘original position’), specifically, to decide what basic ideals your society would run on (the ‘principles of justice’).

In order to agree fairly on these ideals, you agree that none of you should know anything about where in this new and wonderful society you personally might end up (the ‘veil of ignorance’). So, none of you know whether you will be rich or poor; whether gifted with talents or not; what your race, ethnicity or gender will be; whether you are religious or not and if so which religion; the social status of your family of origin; or, your particular personality traits. You are to agree on a new society fairly, without knowing any of these particular details about yourself beforehand.

John Rawls argues that in this situation, we would all agree to the idea that, in the new society, important social goods would be distributed equally, except in those cases where unequal distributions of these goods would benefit everybody (the ‘general conception of justice’).

[In Rawls’s technical language: He argues that in the original position, subject to the veil of ignorance, representatives would agree to the following general conception of justice: “All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage.” 127 and 145]

Your ‘group work’ in-class Task: Explain the reasoning that would lead us to decide upon the general conception of justice in the original position—that is, why would we think that major social goods should be given to everyone equally unless an unequal distribution was good for everyone?