Does Not Knowing Your Place Make a Rule Fairer?

Suppose people must design rules that will shape everyone's lives, but do not know whether they will be rich or poor, part of a majority or minority, able-bodied or in need of care. Would they choose the same rules? Rawls calls this thought experiment the original position, whose most striking device is the veil of ignorance.

It does not leave the parties knowing nothing. They retain general facts about society, economics and human psychology, and they can reason. What they lack is knowledge of their own class, ethnicity, gender, abilities, conception of a good life, and the present shape of their society. They therefore cannot tailor principles to a known advantage. Rawls uses the device to model the fair choice of principles for society's basic institutions by free and equal citizens, not to turn every everyday decision into a lottery.

Consider rules for distributing school resources. If no one knows whether they will be a top-performing student, a disabled student or a child from a poorly resourced household, it becomes harder to protect only those already advantaged. Yet the thought experiment does not calculate a unique answer. Utilitarians can use different versions of ignorance while stressing average benefit, and critics ask whether removing identity also removes knowledge of genuine needs.

In my view, the veil's greatest value is diagnostic rather than computational. If we would accept a rule only while knowing that it benefits us, the rule needs a stronger justification. We must then return to concrete circumstances and ask whether the differences abstracted away are themselves relevant to justice.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/original-position/
https://iep.utm.edu/rawls/