Original Position (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Cite this entry Search the SEP • Advanced Search • Tools • RSS FeedTable of Contents• What's New• Archives• Projected ContentsEditorial Information• About the SEP• Editorial Board• How to Cite the SEP• Special CharactersSupport the SEPContact the SEP ©Metaphysics Research Lab,CSLI,Stanford University  Open access to the SEP is made possible by a world-wide funding initiative. Please Read How You Can Help Keep the Encyclopedia FreeOriginal PositionFirst published Tue Feb 27, 1996; substantive revision Tue Apr 8, 2003The idea of the original position is perhaps the most lastingcontribution of John Rawls to our theorizing about social justice. Theoriginal position is a hypothetical situation in which rationalcalculators, acting as agents or trustees for the interests of concreteindividuals, are pictured as choosing those principles of socialrelations under which their principals would do best. Their choices aresubject to certain constraints, however, and it is these constraintswhich embody the specifically moral elements of original positionargumentation. Crudely, the rational calculators do not know factsabout their principals which would be morally irrelevant to the choiceof principles of justice. This restriction on their reasoning isembodied, picturesquely, in Rawls's so-called veil ofignorance, which occludes information, for instance, aboutprincipals’ age, sex, religious beliefs, etc. Once thisinformation about principals is unavailable to their agents, theplurality of interested parties disappears, and the problem of choiceis rendered determinate. (Because each individual's trustee has thesame information and motivation as every other individual's trustee,the original position is a situation of choice, not of"negotiation" between a plurality of distinct individuals.) Accordingto Rawls, agents so situated would choose two principles of justice,lexically ordered, affirming the equality of basic rights and anapproach to social inequalities governed by the differenceprinciple, according to which inequalities are unjust unlessremoving them would worsen the situations of the worst-off members ofsociety. Original position argumentation is an example of contemporarycontractualism, involves a pure-proceduralist approach to thedetermination of moral principles, and is framed by reflectiveequilibration with widely agreed principles of public morality. It alsoillustrates the pragmatism of Rawls's approach to politicaltheorizing.1. Reflective Equilibrium2. Pure Proceduralism3. Veil of Ignorance4. Rawls's PragmatismBibliographyOther Internet ResourcesRelated Entries1. Reflective EquilibriumThere are epistemological and politicalinterpretations of the original position.On the epistemological reading, the original position is amethodological device for ridding the ethico-politicalobserver of hindrances to h/er clear and distinct perceptionof ethico-political facts. Just as it may be necessary to employprosthetic sensory devices to make observations of distant or minuteobjects or to use techniques of controlled experimentation to eliminatethe influence of "noise" and theoretically irrelevant confoundingvariables, so too, on this reading, might it be necessary, in orderclearly to observe the ethico-political facts, to use some such deviceas the original position. Indeed, the original position might be welladapted to such a task. Eliminating knowledge of personalcharacteristics eliminates the possibility of bias in favor of thosecharacteristics and thus enforces the kind of impartiality ordisinterestedness that is held to be integral to a moral perspective.(In this regard, as Rawls himself recognized, the original positiondevice resembles that of ideal spectator theorists.)This epistemological reading was nevertheless not the interpretationof the original position favored by Rawls himself. Although he did notrepudiate the kind of ethico-political realism that is presupposed bythis reading, he believed that, since realism in this sense is areasonably disputed doctrine, a practical approach to the taskof political justification must prescind from the realism/non-realismdebate within political meta-theory. Since there is reasonabledisagreement about realism, we cannot presuppose it in the context ofpublic political disputation. (On account of the burdens ofjudgment, we cannot expect to resolve the debate about realism to the(reasonable) satisfaction of every reasonable person; this doctrinetherefore cannot provide a basis for politicaltheorizing.)On the political reading, the original position is a device ofrepresentation. Specifically, it represents, in the veil of ignorance,widely accepted constraints on the choice of principles of justice.More concretely, the veil of ignorance embodies the concept ofjustice--i.e. the idea that distributions should not be based onmorally irrelevant features. (Those who reject this concept--and whatit implies for original position argumentation--are, in other words,not part of our moral community.) The information occluded by the veilof ignorance is, precisely, the community's understanding of whatfeatures are morally irrelevant to the choice of principles ofjustice. Although members of a given community may disagree about manymatters relevant to issues of justice, they share--or are alleged orassumed to share--an understanding of justice that, whileinsufficiently concrete or detailed to provide on its own a workableconception of justice, is adequate to the task offraming the choice of such a conception. Working within the frameworkdefined by the veil of ignorance and derived from this widely sharedconcept of justice, rational calculators choose principles of justiceon the basis of their fiduciary duty to the concrete individuals whomthey represent. Their choice is not of an objectively correctconception of justice; it is, rather, of that conception which is bestfit to play a certain kind of social role in the community whosemembers are represented in the original position.Rawls's idea of reflective equilibrium expressed this politicalunderstanding of justification, though in rather a more complicated waythan is usually thought. How are we to justify the claim that someparticular conception of justice is the appropriate one? We are to doso, according to Rawls, by finding that conception which is best fit toplay the role of adjudicating competing claims on scarce socialresources (and of facilitating mutually beneficial exchanges). And howare we to judge fitness for this purpose? No conception of justice canplay such a role unless there is widespread "up-take" of its basicprinciples and deliverances. Hence, we see, for each candidateconception, whether its implications can be brought into reflectiveequilibrium with the considered judgments of justice which arecurrent in a particular community. If they cannot, then up-take willnot be secured and the conception cannot mediate conflict andfacilitate mutual benefit. (This is what distinguishes principledreasoning about justice, even in a "pragmatic mode" from the modusvivendi argumentation that Rawls himself repudiated.) Of course,the process of reflective equilibration is dialectical. The mainmoments of the process are these.We articulate the concept of justice which is widely acceptedwithin a given community.We so devise the veil of ignorance that it embodies thisconcept.We consider what implications about concrete and specific mattersof justice rational calculators standing in a trustee relation, andhence concerned to advance the eligible interests of their principles,would reach subject to the particular restrictions on theircalculations represented by this veil of ignorance.We compare these implications with individuals’ consideredjudgments of justice about these more concrete and specificissues.Where there is divergence between implications and judgments, weconsider whether individuals might be willing to alter their judgmentsto bring them into line with principles which, after all, alreadyexpress their own more abstract views about the concept ofjustice.If there is residual divergence, we modify the veil of ignorance tominimize this divergence.These operations are repeated until eliminable divergence is at aminimum; this is the state of reflective equilibrium. Individuals'concrete and specific judgments about justice are in equilibrium withthose of other individuals, and all individuals in the community shareboth an abstract concept of justice (embodied in the veil) and aworkable public conception of justice.Early discussants assumed that the method of reflectiveequilibration was to be understood epistemologically. Even in ATheory of Justice, there was much textual support for thealternative political reading, but, whatever the situation in the early1970s, it soon became clear that Rawls's preferred reading was indeedthe political one. There are two stories about the development ofRawls's thinking. On the one hand, some commentators believe that Rawlshad adopted an epistemological, specifically Kantian, approach toethico-political justification in his earlier work, at least up toA Theory of Justice, which he then abandoned under thepressure of communitarian, specifically Hegelian, criticism at thehands, in particular, of Michael Sandel. On the other hand, somecommentators believe that Rawls's position, at least since A Theoryof Justice, remained resolutely political, and that any genuinedevelopment of his thought was prompted by considerations internal tohis own perspective. (Rawls seems, in Political Liberalism, toendorse this latter reading of the history.)For the mature Rawls (and perhaps too for the Rawls of A Theoryof Justice), all ethico-political justification, in publiccontexts, is unavoidably politically rather than epistemologicallybased. It is based, in other words, on an overlappingconsensus of the main substantive ethico-political doctrinescurrent in a community. (The consensus is not a modus vivendi,on Rawls's account; it is a principled basis for collective life and itdepends, in effect, on there being a morally significant core ofcommitments common to the "reasonable" fragment of each of the maincomprehensive doctrines in the community.) Absent such a basis forconsensus, there is no possibility of discovering, via reflectiveequilibration, principles of justice which can, because there isadequate up-take, effectively regulate interactions between anddistributions to the members of the community. And since suchdisagreement would make improbable any uncoerced acceptance of someepistemologically sanctioned set of principles, no voluntaristic basisfor social justice could be found in this community--even if anobjective basis could be.2. Pure ProceduralismThe method of original position argumentation is an example of pureproceduralism in ethico-political theorizing. This aspect of Rawls'swork seems not to have been adequately conceptualized, but it iscrucial for understanding larger issues.Imagine that there is for a particular community a public conceptionof the good. In this case, it might be possible to develop rules forthe distribution of goods and services on a broadlyteleological basis. That is right (whether action ordistribution or institution) whose implementation maximizes therealization of the good. Of course, the availability of a publicconception of the good is not, perhaps, a sufficient condition for theviability of such a teleological approach. Even given such aconception, a teleological approach may still be insufficientlysensitive to distributional issues. And, indeed, this is onereason why Rawls rejected a teleological approach to ethico-politicaljustification. But Rawls also argued on other grounds against ateleological approach. In particular, he thought that no such approachis viable (i) because the availability of a public conception of thegood is a necessary condition for the viability of such anapproach, and (ii) because there is no such public conception of thegood in our society and in societies like it.If we cannot develop ethico-political principles of right andjustice on a teleological basis, then how can we do so? According toRawls, we can do so via original position argumentation, framed withconsiderations of reflective equilibrium. That is right and just whichwould be acknowledged as such from the point of view of the originalposition. And what makes being acknowledged from this point of view theright-maker for principles of justice? Because this point of view isthe appropriate one for determining principles of justice, on accountof its reflecting the community's existing concept of justice--onaccount of its reflecting their overlapping consensus of views aboutjustice.Notice that there is no teleological reasoning at work here. Theright-maker for principles of justice is not defined in terms of theconsequences for the realization of the good of conformity with thoseprinciples. The right-maker is (hypothetical) acceptance from aparticular point of view. The right-maker for principles, in otherwords, is their being the output of a particular procedure, inparticular the procedure of original position argumentation. Thereasoners in the original position are not trying, through theirdeliberations, to ensure an outcome that meets some already existingstandard of justice for institutions. Why not? Because there is no suchstandard until it is constructed by their deliberation. And there is nosuch standard because there is pre-existing consensus within thecommunity on neither a conception of the good--which, were itto exist, might permit a perfectly or imperfectly procedural approachto determining the principles of right, nor a full-blownconception of justice--which, were it to exist, would render anyfurther reasoning otiose.3. Veil of IgnoranceFar and away the most striking feature of Rawls's original positionidea is the veil of ignorance. As Rawls pointed out, the idea of aninitial situation of choice for ethico-political principles iscommon to other approaches, and represents a hypotheticalization offamiliar reasoning within the social contract tradition. Whatis particularly interesting about Rawls's approach is that he proposedto restrict the basis for reasoning rather than expanding it, which is,for instance, the approach taken within the ideal spectatorframework.Crudely, ideal-spectator theorists make two theoretical moves whichRawls more or less reversed. Recognizing that ethico-political thinkingought to be conducted from an impartial perspective, ideal-spectatortheorists capture this notion of impartiality by amalgamatingethically-relevant information about all relevantparties--e.g. all the members of some community, and by assuming thatthe spectator in whom this information is lodged makes h/erdetermination of principles on an equitable basis--e.g. in assigningequal weights to information about the preferences of individuals.There are various reasons for wondering whether this procedure isreally a coherent one. Most notably, assumptions about the spectator'sability to store and synthesize information and calculate on its basisare wildly unrealistic. (See Cherniak 1986.) Furthermore, thespectator's calculations not only permit, they force h/er to reckoninter-personal gains and losses in the same way that a purelyprudential self-interested reasoner would reckonintra-personal gains and losses. This is problematic for tworeasons, one of which Rawls himself emphasized. First of all, and thisis Rawls's primary objection, such a procedure forces the spectator tosacrifice one individual's interests to those of others,theoretically without limit, whenever doing so would result inthe maximization of the total the spectator is calculating. Secondly,the idea is suspect, to say the least, that there is some basis for thecommensuration of individuals’ diverse ways of valuing that wouldpermit the determination of some socially valid aggregate for each ofthe various states of affairs which are being evaluated. (SeeD'Agostino 2003.)Crudely, Rawls hoped to avoid these difficulties by reversing themoves of the spectator theorist. Instead of augmenting the informationavailable to choosers, Rawls deliberately impoverished it. Instead ofrequiring choosers to be impartial, he required them to be purelyself-interested--though, of course, in an extended sense; his choosersact to advance the interests of their principals. And by requiringunanimity among the various trustees or agents, Rawls ensured thatindividuals’ interests are not sacrificed to that of thecollective; each individual can veto, through h/er agent/trustee, anysocial settlement that isn't adequately respectful of h/erindividuality. The veil of ignorance is of importance in this context.It ensures impartiality, despite the self-interestedness of thechoosers, by preventing them, through lack of knowledge, from choosingin accordance with partial perspectives that might be favored by theirprincipals. My agent A cannot hold out for some socialsettlement that favors people with those characteristics; s/he doesn'tknow what they are. S/he will therefore have to protect myinterests, as s/he must as their trustee, only by holding out for asocial settlement in which no one's interests are given shortshrift. H/er impartiality is a product of h/er self-interestedness plush/er ignorance. And the latter, crucial to this procedure, is a productof the veil of ignorance.This account of matters also enables us to clear up a confusion thatwas often voiced in the first few years after the publication of ATheory of Justice. It was said that Rawls had sought--as otherssuch as David Gauthier do seek--to reduce ethico-politicalprinciples of right to principles of prudence. This on account of thepurely self-interested deliberations of choosers in the originalposition. What this suggestion ignores is that, though the choosersreason in a purely prudential way, their reasoning isconstrained by their ignorance, and their ignorance isexpressive of the moral demand for impartiality. There isnothing reductionist about Rawls's reasoning, then.4. Rawls's PragmatismThe story I've told about A Theory of Justice is reasonablyfamiliar. What this story ignores, however, is an aspect of Rawls'stotal project in A Theory of Justice that is of considerablesignificance in providing a model for pragmatically-oriented theorizingin ethics and politics across a range of issues. This is, specifically,Rawls's analysis, in sections 22 and 23 of A Theory, of thecircumstances of justice and of the formal constraints on ourunderstanding of justice. The basic ideas are obvious enough, if notmuch discussed, and a short summary (and amplification) will thereforesuffice.First of all, we need to understand that Rawls was trying todetermine, in effect, which principles of sociability are fit toplay a certain role in the organization of our collectivelives. His analysis of justice was therefore not a conceptual analysis,but, rather, an exercise in ‘arm-chair’ social theory. Thequestion is not, or anyway isn't exhausted by: What is the currentunderstanding of justice in our society? The question is,rather: What sort of understanding of justice, if it were propagatedand if there were ‘up-take’ by most citizens, wouldfunction effectively in the circumstances which make such anunderstanding socially important. Rawls's analysis was, then, what Iwill call pragmatic, not conceptual. Rawls put this clearlyenough, I think (Rawls 1999: pp. 102-3):The intuitive idea of justice as fairness is to think ofthe first principles of justice as themselves the object of an originalagreement in a suitably defined initial situation. These principles arethose which rational persons concerned to advance their interests wouldaccept in this position of equality to settle the basic terms of theirassociation. It must be shown, then, that the two principles of justiceare the solution for the problem of choice presented by the originalposition. In order to do this, one must establish that, given thecircumstances of the parties, and their knowledge, beliefs, andinterests, an agreement on these principles is the best way foreach person to secure his ends in view of the alternativesavailable. (Emphasis added)It is, I repeat, a fact about how principles might functionthat justifies the choice of these principles as principles of socialcoordination for our society. That they enable "each person to securehis ends", subject to certain circumstances, conditions, andconstraints, is their justification, not that they reflect someantecedent understanding of what justice is, metaphysically orconceptually. (This, by the way, shows why Rawls's approach is notsubject, or at least is not subject for the reasons which are usuallyadduced, to the charge that it provides inadequate ethical leverageagainst such existing understandings of justice as may, of course,reflect ideological thinking. Rawls's approach is meant, specifically,to correct for mistaken understandings that might nevertheless bewidely diffused. And the basis for correction is, of course, apragmatic one: How well does this understanding facilitate theachievement of certain goals?)In view of how little comment this aspect of Rawls's approach hasattracted--that is, its pragmatic orientation, it is difficult toexaggerate the importance of these considerations, not only for Rawls'sspecific project, but, indeed, for ethico-political theorizing ingeneral. From a pragmatic point of view, the question is, always, Whatis good in the way of belief? How can our aims as individuals andcollectively best be promoted by our system of beliefs and practices?This methodological readjustment is, I think, a contribution ofRawlsianism to our thinking in these areas that is truly revolutionaryin potential.Let's see, in detail and with some amendments, how pragmaticanalysis works in relation to normative concepts and principles. Rawlsexplicitly identified two sorts of considerations that are relevant tosuch analysis and implies a third.First of all, Rawls noted that, in order to determine whatsort of principles might be fit to play a certain role, we mustunderstand what circumstances make it necessary to develop andpropagate such principles. And the reasoning, largely implicit inRawls, is obvious enough. Suppose, for instance, that scarcity ofsupply relative to demand for "social primary goods", in Rawls'sterminology, is characteristic of our situation. This is part of whatmakes the propagation of distributional principles and practicesnecessary: given scarcity and certain other factors, people will notcollectively and automatically self-equilibrate to ensure thatdemand does not out-strip supply. But, of course, this fact must alsobe taken account of in the development of precisely these principles,which, in particular, will not be fit to play the role of justice ifthey just assume away the problem of distribution by presupposing, forinstance, that individuals will spontaneously adjust their demands tothe supply available to fulfill them. (Bruce Ackerman's account, inSocial Justice in the Liberal State, is particularly clear onthe importance of these circumstances.)Secondly, Rawls noted that, in order to determine what sortof principles might be fit to play a certain role, we must understandwhat (formal) constraints on such principles arereasonable to impose, at least tentatively, as an expression of thefunction which we expect such principles to discharge. (Given thepragmatism of Rawls's approach, the epithet ‘formal’ was, Ithink, unfortunate.) Again, the reasoning is obvious. If we expectprinciples of justice to play a role in settling certain sorts ofdisputes that might arise in our society, then, obviously, they willhave to exhibit certain sorts of features. One of Rawls's constraintsis, of course, that "a conception of right must impose an ordering onconflicting claims", a requirement which, according to Rawls, whosepragmatism was plainly in evidence here, "springs directly from theroles of its principles in adjusting competing demands". (If we are indispute and appeal to ‘the right’ as a basis for settlingour dispute, but it, ‘the right’, fails to order ourclaims, then it contributes nothing to settling the dispute we'd triedto use it, as a tool, to settle.)Finally, I note, distinguishing what Rawls himself had runtogether, that, in order to determine what sort of principles might befit to play a certain role, we must understand what capacities andattitudes human beings are likely to bring to the situations, in whichthese principles might be deployed, that will support their deploymentin those situations. (This is the ‘possible’ aspect ofRawls's analysis of the "normal conditions under which humancooperation is both possible and necessary".) In this case, principlesand practices cannot be propagated, let alone play a role in adjustingpeople's relations with one another, if, for instance, there is some(relatively) insuperable barrier, cognitive, affective orinstitutional, to their successful uptake. (Rawls's analysis of‘feasibility considerations’ in Part Three of A Theoryof Justice is directed, in part, to an examination of these sortsof issues.) It is argued in D'Agostino 1996, for instance, that the‘reasonableness’ of individuals is, in this sense, acapacity, or perhaps an attitude, that needs to be widespread in agiven community if certain sorts of social relations are to be possiblein that community. This, I will say, is a condition forjustice.It is circumstances, conditions, and constraints, in the sensesidentified, that play a crucial and largely unnoticed role in Rawls'spragmatic/functionalist analysis of justice. In short, we try toidentify principles of justice such that:because of the conditions for justice--e.g. people'sreasonableness,these principles can meet the demands specified by the formalconstraints on justicein the circumstances of justice--e.g. despite the relative scarcityof supply with respect to demand.Notice, in particular, that an analysis conducted on these termscannot possibly be confused with conceptual analysis, no matter howloosely that ideal is interpreted. Although there may be certain‘conceptual’ elements involved in articulating theconstraints on justice, even in this case functions are to thefore--What do we want to use the principles (and practices) ofjustice to do? And, certainly, claims about the conditions forand circumstances of justice are, although usually highly abstract andgeneral, matters of fact rather than matters of meaning. We are tryingto design a tool for use by certain kinds of agents to accomplishcertain sorts of purposes in a certain kind of environment, and ourproblem is one of practical functional design, not of conceptualanalysis or metaphysical speculation about The Good or The Right.BibliographyAckerman, Bruce, 1980, Social Justice in the LiberalState, Yale University Press.Cherniak, Christopher, 1986, Minimal Rationality, M.I.T.Press.D'Agostino, Fred, 1996, Free Public Reason, OxfordUniversity Press.D'Agostino, Fred, 2003, Incommensurability andCommensuration, Ashgate.Daniels, Norman, 1979, "Wide Reflective Equilibrium and TheoryAcceptance in Ethics", Journal of Philosophy76: 256-282.Dworkin, Ronald, 1975, "The Original Position", in Norman Daniels,ed., Reading Rawls, Basil Blackwell.Rawls, John, 1999, A Theory of Justice, Harvard UniversityPress [original published 1971], especially chapter III.Sandel, Michael, 1982, Liberalism and the Limits ofJustice, Cambridge University Press, especially chapter 3.Other Internet ResourcesRawls: The Original Position, by R.J. Kilcullen(Macquarie University, 1996) Related Entries ethics: deontological | justification, political: public | liberalism | social contract: contemporary approaches to Copyright © 2003 byFred D'Agostino <f.dagostino@uq.edu.au> |
|
