Veil of Ignorance
A just order, Rawls suggests, begins with a wager of radical self-forgetfulness: design the rules as though you will awaken inside them as anyone at all.
Quick Facts
- Period
- 1971 – 1971
- Region
- Americas
- Key Figures
- Amartya Sen, David Hume, Immanuel Kant +3 more
Key Figures
Amartya Sen
Successor
Economics and political philosophyAmartya Sen’s encounter with John Rawls was never a simple act of discipleship or rejection. It was, instead, the kind o...
David Hume
Interlocutor
Scottish EnlightenmentDavid Hume was not a commentator on al-Ghazali in any direct historical sense, and he did not shape al-Ghazali’s thought...
Immanuel Kant
Interlocutor
German philosophyImmanuel Kant gives beauty one of its most influential modern formulations in the *Critique of Judgment*, but the force ...
John Rawls
Originator
Political philosophy, Harvard UniversityJohn Rawls is often treated as the philosophical adversary of communitarianism, but that framing misses the more reveali...
Martha Nussbaum
Successor
Philosophy, law, and political theoryMartha Nussbaum has been one of the most searching and formidable interlocutors of Peter Singer because she shares his c...
Robert Nozick
Critic
Political philosophy, Harvard UniversityRobert Nozick occupies a different philosophical style from Ayn Rand, but he is central to her legacy because he helped ...
The Story
This narrative combines documented history with dramatized scenes for storytelling purposes.
The World That Made It
By the time John Rawls began shaping the argument that would culminate in *A Theory of Justice*, the prestige of moral philosophy in the Anglophone world had be...
The Central Idea
The veil of ignorance is often mistaken for a simple call to be fair-minded, but Rawls meant something more precise and more severe. In the original position, t...
The System
Rawls did not introduce the veil of ignorance as a self-standing puzzle. It belongs to a larger architecture in which a society’s basic structure is the primary...
Tensions & Critiques
The most powerful objections to the veil of ignorance do not come from people who think Rawls was confused about what fairness means. They come from critics who...
Legacy & Echoes
The veil of ignorance has outlived the architecture that produced it. Rawls’s own account remains the canonical source, but the device now travels far beyond th...
Timeline
John Rawls is born in Baltimore
**1921-02-21** — Rawls’s early life would later appear almost deliberately unheroic, which suited a thinker interested in institutions rather than charisma. His mature philosophy would be shaped by the question of how ordinary citizens might justify a social order to one another.
Rawls completes his Harvard doctorate
**1949** — Rawls’s dissertation began the long path toward the theory of justice, though the famous veil of ignorance would come later. The training mattered because it placed him inside analytic philosophy while leaving him dissatisfied with its thin moral vocabulary.
Rawls publishes 'Justice as Fairness'
**1958** — This essay presents an early form of the view that justice should be understood as fairness rather than utility. The paper is one of the clearest stepping-stones toward the original position and the veil of ignorance.
Rawls circulates the Harvard manuscript of A Theory of Justice
**1967** — By the late 1960s Rawls had a mature account of the original position, and the manuscript began its scholarly life in discussion and criticism. The idea of choosing principles behind a veil of ignorance was now firmly in place as the work’s central device.
A Theory of Justice is published
**1971** — The book gives the veil of ignorance its canonical form and immediately transforms political philosophy. Rawls’s formulation of the original position becomes one of the most influential thought experiments in modern ethics and politics.
Robert Nozick publishes Anarchy, State, and Utopia
**1974** — Nozick’s libertarian critique forces Rawls’s theory into a lasting public debate. The challenge from entitlement theory helps define the enduring fault line between patterned justice and historical justice.
Rawls publishes Political Liberalism
**1993** — Rawls revises the wider framework of his theory to address pluralism and the problem of stability. The original position remains important, but it now sits inside a more explicit account of public reason.
Rawls publishes Justice as Fairness: A Restatement
**2001** — This concise restatement clarifies the principles associated with the veil of ignorance and the difference principle. It helped secure the theory’s teaching role and long-term philosophical influence.
Rawls dies
**2002-11-24** — Rawls’s death marked the end of a philosophical career that had already reshaped political theory worldwide. His central device, however, remained fully active in debates about justice, inequality, and legitimacy.
Amartya Sen publishes The Idea of Justice
**2009** — Sen renews the conversation by criticizing ideal theory while preserving Rawls’s concern with fairness. The veil of ignorance survives this critique as a benchmark, even when philosophers move beyond it.
Global debates over inequality revive Rawlsian language
**2013** — Discussion of inequality, healthcare, and opportunity increasingly uses Rawlsian terms in public policy and academic work. The veil of ignorance becomes a standard way to test whether institutions would be acceptable from any social position.
Public debate over justice in algorithmic systems expands Rawls’s relevance
**2016** — Questions about discrimination, data, and opaque decision-making make the veil of ignorance newly useful as a heuristic. The thought experiment is increasingly applied to technology, not only to classical distributive justice.
Sources
- primary_textJohn Rawls, A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. (Harvard University Press, 1999)
Canonical statement of the original position and veil of ignorance.
- primary_textJohn Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded ed. (Columbia University Press, 2005)
Rawls’s mature account of pluralism and public reason.
- primary_textJohn Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Harvard University Press, 2001)
Concise late clarification of the theory.
- referenceStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 'John Rawls'
Authoritative overview of Rawls’s philosophy and major debates.
- referenceStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 'Original Position'
Detailed discussion of the device itself and its interpretations.
- referenceInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: 'John Rawls'
Accessible scholarly overview.
- secondary_textSamuel Freeman, Rawls (Routledge, 2007)
Major scholarly study of Rawls’s theory and its development.
- secondary_textThomas Nagel, 'Rawls on Justice' in Moral Questions (Cambridge University Press, 1979)
Classic philosophical discussion of Rawls’s framework.
- secondary_textAmartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Harvard University Press, 2009)
Important critique and extension of Rawlsian ideal theory.
- secondary_textMartha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice (Harvard University Press, 2006)
Capabilities-based development and critique of Rawlsian assumptions.
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