Questions hidden inside
- Which rules would you accept if you did not know whether they would advantage or disadvantage you?
- What information should be hidden to make a choice fair, and what general knowledge must remain?
- Does impartial choice favor equality, priority for the least advantaged, average welfare, or another principle?
Philosophical lenses
Fairness
Can principles be chosen without tailoring them to one's position?
The veil removes knowledge that could invite bargaining for personal or group advantage while retaining general facts needed for social choice.
Risk
How should choosers respond to uncertainty about their position?
Different attitudes toward risk can support different principles, making the reasoning of the parties as important as the information they lack.
Institutions
What is being selected?
Rawls uses the device to choose principles for the basic structure of society, not to decide every isolated personal distribution.
Begin with a choice
Without knowing your future social position, which principle would you give the greatest priority?
The scenario
Imagine representatives choosing the main principles that will govern social institutions. They know general facts about economics, psychology, scarcity, cooperation, and social life, but they do not know their own class, wealth, talents, health, social identity, ambitions, or generation.
This information barrier is the veil of ignorance. Because no one can design principles for a known personal position, the parties must choose rules they can accept across the range of positions they might occupy.
What the experiment is for
The device models fairness by limiting the influence of morally arbitrary advantages. It asks what principles free and equal persons would choose when none can exploit knowledge of their own bargaining position.
Rawls applies the choice to the basic structure of society: major institutions that distribute rights, opportunities, income, wealth, and the conditions of social cooperation. The exercise is not simply a command to divide every good equally.
What Rawls argues
Rawls argues for equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and a principle permitting social and economic inequalities only under conditions that include benefit to the least advantaged. The principles have an ordering that prevents ordinary gains from purchasing the loss of basic liberty.
The reasoning depends on how the original position is specified, including what the parties know, what interests they represent, and why they would reject some risks. The veil alone does not mechanically generate one conclusion.
| Possible principle | Reason behind the veil | Central objection |
|---|---|---|
| Equal basic liberties | No one knows which beliefs, aims, or minority position they will hold | Disagreement remains about which liberties are basic and how conflicts are resolved |
| Priority to the least advantaged | Anyone could occupy a severely disadvantaged position | The rule may be too cautious or difficult to operationalize |
| Average welfare | Each person may reason from expected social benefit | Some individuals could bear severe losses for aggregate gains |
| Strict equality | It prevents distributive advantage based on arbitrary position | Some inequalities may improve opportunity or everyone's condition |
Objections, limits, and extensions
Critics question whether the parties are too abstract, whether the device embeds particular assumptions about rationality and risk, and whether one hypothetical agreement can represent people with diverse relationships, histories, disabilities, and forms of dependence.
The veil can also be extended to generations by hiding when a chooser will live. That extension highlights long-term stewardship and just savings, but it leaves open how present needs, uncertainty, and obligations to differently situated future people should be balanced.
- Ask which facts are hidden and which general facts remain available.
- Distinguish choosing social principles from allocating one isolated benefit.
- Compare impartiality with perspectives grounded in care, history, or actual exclusion.
- Test whether a changed probability of advantage alters the supposedly fair choice.
Change one fact
Should this probability change the principles you regard as fair?
Your earlier choice: Choose principles without knowing which social position you will occupy.
Continue with Ada
Professor Ada Rowan
Test an idea or objection
Compare perspectives, test an assumption, or develop an objection using this reviewed page as context.
Related paths
Sources
- A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition — John Rawls (1999)
Rawls’s revised presentation of justice as fairness, the original position, the veil of ignorance, equal basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity, the difference principle, and duties between generations.
View source - Justice (2026)
Current survey of justice as a virtue of persons, a property of institutions, and a demand concerning distribution, recognition, procedure, and rectification. It provides a neutral framework for comparing competing theories without assuming that justice means only equality or only desert.
View source - Intergenerational Justice (2026)
Current survey of duties and claims across generations, including savings, natural resources, climate change, population choices, democratic representation, discounting, and the standing of people who do not yet exist.
View source
Last modified 2026-07-30. Reviewed by Thinking Paths editorial team.