The original position is John Rawls’s 1971 thought experiment: individuals behind a veil of ignorance choose principles of justice for society’s basic structure. It treats fairness as a design problem—not a historical fact, cultural norm or psychological tendency. It works only if participants are extremely risk-averse. Drop that assumption, and it delivers wealth maximisation instead of egalitarianism. It reshaped political philosophy by making distributional justice a matter of procedure, not preference. It has not displaced utilitarianism—but it forced utilitarians to defend their assumptions aloud.
It is not a description of history or psychology—it is a device for testing fairness.
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Two phrases, one constraint
Rawls coined both 'original position' and 'veil of ignorance' to name one tightly controlled condition.
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What gets distributed—and who sets the standard
It directs attention to primary social goods—and insists the worst-off set the floor.
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One assumption, two justices
Change one assumption—risk neutrality—and the whole structure collapses into utilitarianism.
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Worth your time?
Yes. Study the whole thing.
4.5/ 5
What works
Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971)
What does not
culture/art
culture/arts
culture/cities
culture/generations
Study it if
political philosophers
law students
policy designers
Skip it if
historians of 1971
fans of Rawls’s biography
readers seeking empirical data on fairness
Who should study it, and who should skipHide who it is for
The written brief1 min read
What the thing is
A thought experiment for selecting principles of justice. The parties deliberate over the distribution of primary social goods. Rawls argues that representatives in the original position would adopt the maximin rule, which supports a conception of justice that prioritises the least advantaged.
Where it came from
John Rawls introduced it in 1971 as a replacement for the ‘state of nature’ in social contract theory. Rawls coined both terms, ‘original position’ and ‘veil of ignorance’.
What it gets right
It forces justice to be designed without self-interest. The veil of ignorance isolates moral reasoning from privilege, bias or accident.
What it gets wrong
It assumes risk-averse reasoning is the only rational choice. Under risk neutrality, it yields wealth-maximising outcomes—not Rawls’s egalitarian ones.
Why it matters now
It remains the dominant framework for debating distributive justice—especially where inequality, algorithmic fairness and global governance collide.
Is it worth your time
Yes—if you care how fairness is reasoned, not just asserted.
