PHL100Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 45: Well-Order, Thought Experiment
Document Summary
Two principles allow us to assess, criticize, and create political and economic institutions. Equal maximum liberties: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for all. They don"t know their talents, their natural endowments, and their social position will be. Given their ignorance of their future position, they have no reason to attach unfair privileges to any particular position. Since they might be in the lowest position, rawls assumes they will choose a rule that will make that lowest position tolerable. The 2 principles couldn"t so easily be derived from reason directly. Instead, rawls proposes a thought experiment involving a virtual social contract, arrived at by rational participants under speci c conditions. They are rational: and can trace likely consequences. Generality: must be capable of serving as a public charter of a well-ordered society in perpetuity.
