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Concept
Original position
Summary
The original position (OP), often referred to as the veil of ignorance, is a thought experiment used for reasoning about the principles that should structure a society based on mutual dependence. The phrases original position and veil of ignorance were coined by the American philosopher John Rawls, but the thought experiment itself was developed by William Vickrey and John Harsanyi in earlier writings.
In the original position, you are asked to consider which principles you would select for the basic structure of society, but you must select as if you had no knowledge ahead of time what position you would end up having in that society. This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents you from knowing your ethnicity, social status, gender and, crucially in Rawls' formulation, your or anyone else's idea of how to lead a good life. Ideally, this would force participants to select principles impartially and rationally.
In Rawls's theory the original position plays the same role that the "state of nature" does in the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes,and John Locke. The original position figures prominently in Rawls's 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. It has influenced a variety of thinkers from a broad spectrum of philosophical orientations.
The concept of the veil of ignorance has been in use by other names for centuries by philosophers such as John Stuart Mill and Immanuel Kant whose work discussed the concept of the social contract, Adam Smith with his "impartial spectator", or the ideal observer theory. John Harsanyi helped to formalize the concept in economics, and argued that it provides an argument in favor of utilitarianism rather than an argument for a social contract, as rational agents consider expected outcomes, not maximin outcomes or the worst-case outcomes. Harsanyi argued that a person in the original position would maximize their expected utility, rather than choosing minimax. The usage of the term by John Rawls was developed in his 1971 book A Theory of Justice.
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