DEEP READING · READ 24
A Theory of Justice · John Rawls · 1971
If, before you were born, you had no idea who you would turn out to be — man or woman, rich or dirt-poor, gifted or slow, healthy or disabled — what rules would you set for the society about to receive you? Rawls's answer: justice is the set of rules a rational person would choose for everyone from behind that veil of "not knowing who you are." Because you don't know which slot you'll land in, you don't dare let any slot be too miserable — fairness is forced upon you.
Rawls (1921–2002) was a Harvard political philosopher who spent a lifetime honing essentially this one book. A Theory of Justice (1971) single-handedly revived a dying discipline. Before it, Anglophone academia was ruled by logical positivism and utilitarianism, and the big question — "what makes a society just?" — was dismissed as unscientific, not worth serious argument. Rawls proved, with a full apparatus of rigorous reasoning, that the question can be argued — and argued to a structured answer. For half a century nearly every quarrel in political philosophy — libertarianism, communitarianism, feminism — has been a response to him, or a refutation of him. You can disagree with Rawls, but you cannot get around him.
Rawls gave the old social-contract tradition a new twist. Where classical contract theory asked "what would people agree to in a state of nature," he asked a purer thought-experiment: suppose a group must jointly settle a society's basic rules, but they sit behind a veil of ignorance that hides every concrete fact about themselves — their class, race, sex, level of talent, health, even what they believe and what kind of life they want to lead, and which generation they belong to. They know only general facts (people disagree, resources are moderately scarce, people are broadly rational and self-interested). This bargaining scene, drained of all identity, is the original position.
The veil's job is to block partiality. In real life everyone bends the rules their own way — the rich want low taxes, the healthy shrug at health coverage, a majority doesn't mind discrimination. But once you don't know who you are, you can't tailor a rule to "people like me," because you have no idea which kind of person you are. So the private wish to "look out for myself" gets forced into the public discipline of "look out for every kind of person." The neatest analogy is the old rule for cutting a cake — let whoever cuts it take the last slice: not knowing which piece is his, he can only cut evenly. The veil of ignorance raises that kitchen wisdom into a constitutional principle for an entire society.
Its real contribution is to give "fairness" an operational definition. Fairness is no longer a vague plea to "put yourself in others' shoes"; it is a machine that genuinely filters out bias: any rule you would dare to defend only after you know your own identity is not a just rule.
What would the people behind the veil choose? Rawls argues they would unanimously settle on two principles, in a strict order of priority:
The crux is the lexical priority (a "dictionary ordering"): the sequence cannot be reversed. Liberty first, fair equality of opportunity second, the difference principle third. Lexical, as in a dictionary, means you compare the first letter first, and only turn to the second when the first is tied — that is, you cannot trade basic liberties for economic gain. You may not abolish free speech because "we'll pay the poor to keep quiet," even if a majority would take the deal today. A basic liberty may be restricted only for the sake of liberty itself, never surrendered for bread. This marks Rawls off from both his rivals at once: he is no utilitarian (no sacrificing individual liberty for the total), and no laissez-faire libertarian (economic inequality is checked by the "worst-off" gate).
The difference principle is the book's most contested and most profound piece, and deserves its own unpacking. Beneath it lies a plain but subversive thought — moral arbitrariness: your talents (intelligence, a strong body, an ear for music) were not earned; they are cards dealt by genes and luck. Being born into a house of books or into a slum is even less your choice. Since these starting lines are, morally speaking, pure accident that no one "deserves," letting them directly decide who is rich and who is poor has no built-in moral legitimacy.
From this Rawls draws a startling conclusion: the distribution of natural talents should be regarded as a "common asset." Not that we confiscate the clever person's brain, but that society should be arranged so that the talented are free to exercise their gifts — while the extra rewards they gain are conditioned on simultaneously lifting the worst-off. The genius may draw a high salary and the entrepreneur may grow rich — provided the incentive scheme ultimately leaves the assembly-line worker and the sick and frail better off than they'd be under a flat "everyone gets the same." Inequality isn't forbidden; it has to buy its ticket — it must earn gains for those at the bottom before it is allowed to exist.
Why do the people behind the veil pick this cautious principle rather than gamble on the "higher average" that utilitarianism promises? Because the risk is too lopsided. Not knowing who you are, you must guard against being the most wretched one. The rational move is maximin (maximize the minimum) — among all options, pick the one whose worst outcome is the least bad. Better a society with a firmly propped-up floor than one with a glossy average where landing at the bottom means ruin with no recovery. Back to the cake: if you can only grab a slice at random and might be handed the smallest, when you set the rules you will insist that "even the smallest slice not be too small." The difference principle institutionalizes that instinct.
Its sharpest sting is that it pries open the self-evident story of "I succeeded because I worked hard, so I deserve it" — because your very capacity for effort is itself largely the product of an upbringing, a temperament, and opportunities you did not earn. Rawls does not deny individual striving; his reminder is that a society which books every gain as "individually deserved" is stamping the word "justice" onto cards that luck dealt.
Another puzzle: the people behind the veil don't know what kind of life they want (one craves wealth, another the spiritual path, another burns for art) — so what do they sit down to bargain over? Rawls's ingenious answer is primary goods: the all-purpose means that are useful whatever your life plan turns out to be — rights and liberties, opportunities, income and wealth, and, most crucially, the social bases of self-respect. Behind the veil no one argues abstractly for "happiness"; each argues for "give me a larger share of primary goods," because a larger share leaves you better positioned for whatever you may later want to do.
Rawls singles out self-respect as the most important primary good. If a person stops believing that his life plan is worth pursuing, or is systematically looked down on in others' eyes, every other good loses its shine. This is his deeper reason for rejecting utilitarianism and abject poverty alike: a society that leaves those at the bottom living in humiliation robs them not merely of money but of the ground on which a person stands.
One last methodological question: what makes these two principles right? Rawls appeals neither to revelation nor to utilitarian calculation, but to reflective equilibrium: you move back and forth between abstract principles and your considered concrete judgments (say, "slavery is obviously unjust," "religious persecution is obviously wrong") — if a principle yields conclusions you simply cannot accept, you revise the principle; if an intuition can't survive the principle's scrutiny, you revise the intuition — until the two ends fit and reach equilibrium. Justice is not an objective truth waiting to be "discovered," but the most internally coherent set of beliefs we can calibrate our way to. This also explains his whole strategy of persuasion: he isn't proving you "must" accept the principles, but getting you to notice that your own steadiest moral intuitions already point toward these two.
The whole book is a single thread: use a fair procedure of choice to force out principles of justice no one dares reject, then turn those principles on real institutions.
A Theory of Justice is not the end. Late in life Rawls decided he had made a mistake: he had presented "justice as fairness" as a comprehensive moral doctrine — a complete philosophy of the person, of freedom, of Kantian autonomy. But in a modern society deeply divided over faith and values (what he called the fact of reasonable pluralism), on what ground could you require devout Catholics, utilitarians, and secular liberals all to accept one comprehensive philosophy? To insist would require repression — and such a society would be neither stable nor just.
Hence the great turn of Political Liberalism (1993), captured in one phrase — "political, not metaphysical": principles of justice should rest on no single all-encompassing worldview (religious or philosophical), but only on the political culture citizens already share in a democratic society. Two signature ideas: overlapping consensus — different comprehensive doctrines (Christianity, Kantianism, utilitarianism…) can each, for its own reasons, converge on the same political principles of justice, like different pillars holding up one arch; and public reason — when deciding constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice, citizens should appeal to public reasons everyone can accept, not private ones only their own sect endorses: you may believe in God, but to persuade others in the public forum you must give reasons anyone can follow.
He also pushed the view outward: The Law of Peoples (1999) tries to extend the contract to relations among peoples — though he refused to apply the difference principle at the global level, asking only that wealthy societies help "burdened societies" reach basic decency, a conservative stance that drew Pogge's and Beitz's challenge: "why does justice stop at the border?" Only when the three steps are read together is Rawls complete: first he erects the principles of justice (A Theory of Justice), then he solves how they can coexist stably in a plural society (Political Liberalism), and finally he asks whether they can travel abroad (The Law of Peoples).
① Justice is the first virtue of social institutions — however efficient, an unjust institution should be reformed; before justice, both efficiency and majority preference must yield.
② To test whether a rule is just, ask one thing: if you didn't know who you would be born as, would you still dare to set this rule?
③ The genius of the veil of ignorance is to force the private wish to "look out for myself" into the public discipline of "look out for every kind of person" — fairness rests not on a saint's goodwill but on a procedure that filters out bias.
④ Those behind the veil choose two ordered principles: first secure equal basic liberties for all, then fair equality of opportunity, and only last permit inequality — but inequality must leave even the worst-off better off.
⑤ Liberty cannot be traded for bread: a basic liberty may be restricted only for the sake of liberty itself, never surrendered for economic gain (lexical priority).
⑥ Your talents and your birth are cards luck dealt, deserved by no one; cashing them straight into who is rich and who is poor carries no built-in moral legitimacy.
⑦ The difference principle doesn't begrudge the genius a high salary; it only requires that the incentive ultimately lift the worst-off too — talent is a "common asset," and its fruits must reach everyone.
⑧ Not knowing who you are, the rational choice is to "prop up the floor" (maximin), not to gamble on a society with a glossy average that might drop you into unrecoverable ruin.
⑨ The most important primary good is self-respect: a society that leaves the bottom living in humiliation strips away not just money but the ground a person stands on.
⑩ The strongest objections come from both flanks — Nozick asks "doesn't a person own himself first?", Sandel asks "just who is that 'I' stripped of everything?" — while Rawls himself later steps back, using "overlapping consensus" to let divided moderns keep their own views yet guard one shared justice.