A quotation from John Rawls

John Rawls

1921 CE – 2002 CE

He asked what principles of justice you would choose if you didn't know who you'd be. The answer was more radical than anyone expected.

Rawls spent twenty years writing A Theory of Justice, which appeared in 1971 and immediately became the most discussed work in political philosophy since Mill. Its central device was the veil of ignorance: imagine choosing the principles that will govern your society without knowing your position in it: your race, class, talent, or fortune. From behind this veil, Rawls argued, rational people would choose two principles: equal basic liberties for all, and economic inequalities allowed only when they benefit the least advantaged. The second principle was more demanding than it looked: it did not permit inequality for its own sake but only when it raised the floor. He revised and extended the argument for the rest of his life, making it less dependent on a particular account of rationality and more on the idea of a political consensus among people with fundamentally different views of the good life. He was quiet, methodical, and private. The argument did the work.