Behind the Veil of Ignorance, no one knows who they are. They lack clues as to their class, their privileges, or their disadvantages. They exist as an impartial group, tasked with designing a new society with its own conception of justice.
And — here’s the kicker — what if you had to make those decisions without knowing who you would be in this new society?
“But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself.”
Philosopher John Rawls asked just that in a thought experiment known as “the Veil of Ignorance” in his 1971 book, Theory of Justice.
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