Veil of ignorance

Rawls's thought experiment: choose principles of justice without knowing what position you will hold in society.

Also: original position, Rawls's veil, justice as fairness

What it means

In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls asks us to imagine choosing the basic rules of society from an 'original position' behind a veil of ignorance. The choosers do not know their class, wealth, race, sex, talents, religion or idea of the good life, though they know general facts about society. Because nobody can tailor the rules to their own advantage, the choice is meant to be fair. Rawls argued that people would choose equal basic liberties and allow inequalities only if they benefit the least advantaged. John Harsanyi used a similar device but concluded that rational choosers would pick average utilitarianism. Critics doubt that such stripped-down choosers could decide anything at all.

The questions it belongs to

• 6.4.1 Distributive JusticeWho should get what — and why?
• 3.2.4 Contract-Based ApproachesCould you justify this to everyone it affects?

Thinkers

• John Rawls
• John Harsanyi

Traditions

• Analytic

To read

• A Theory of Justice — John Rawls
• Political Liberalism — John Rawls

Sources and further reading

• Original Position (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Social Contract Theory (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Written by the Coordinates of Thought editors and checked against the sources above on 29 October 2026. Not peer-reviewed. How we write and check.

All terms in the glossary