PHIL 1550 Lecture 10: A Theory of Justice (Rawls)
19 Apr 2016
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A theory of justice is to be decided as a social contract (similar to the procedures of locke, rousseau, This concerns decisions regarding justice as fairness (513), which: Rawls calls this situation the original position. : conveys the idea that the principles of justice are agreed to in an initial situation that is fair (514). Op is a purely hypothetical situation or heuristic device to help establish principles of justice. It is hypothetical because we are to imagine that people enter into deciding principles of justice from a. He calls this standpoint the veil of ignorance : disinterested standpoint. In the hypothetical original position, a group of people decide: the basic rights and duties required of each member, how social benefits or social goods are to be distributed. Of course, this is not how we decide on what is just or fair in society. More often we are born within a particular position in some particular society (514).
