th the idea of rational choice. He sums up this idea by stating: one conception of justice is more reasonable than another, or justifiable with respect to it, if rational persons in the initial situation would choose its principles over those of the other for the role of justice. Conceptions of justice are to be ranked by their acceptability to people so circumstance. Understood in this way the question of justification is settled by working out a problem of deliberation... 3 I think the Original Position, even if it is just an idea to use as a thought experiment, provides a fertile proving ground for thinking about what is true justice and the formation of an ideal society that maximizes justice for everyone. The only flaw I find in it is the inability of the human creature to leave behind his or her prejudices to think in this way. This sort of thinking that Rawls proposes is "outside of the box" for most of us as human beings. This shortcoming is shared with the idea of the state of nature in other political philosophers as well (such as Hobbes or Locke). An important aspect to the Original Position (and one that addresses some of our prominent human traits and short-comings) is the idea of the Veil of Ignorance. This is a very necessary idea that allows Rawls's philosophy to really work. The Veil of Ignorance basically deals with Rawls's belief that part of our human nature is egotist and it is mostly concerned and acts out of our own rational self interests. Rawls, unlike many idealistic writers, seems to me very rational in tackling this problem. Many utopian writers seem to either want to gloss over problems with human nature and believe people are all simply inherently good (thereby bypassing having to tackle these sort of thorny issues). With the Veil, Rawls recognizes and deals in a very rational way with self interest. The Veil of Ignorance is essentially a creation that Rawls comes up with and applies to the person in the Original Position. The person in the Original Position, under the Veil, is not aware of where they will end up in the society (hence the name "veil of ignorance"). In the society that results from the Original Position, the person may end up being a professional athlete, a brain surgeon, a tree surgeon, a clerk, or even mentally ill and incapable of doing work and dependent solely upon the society to take care of them. By adding this element to his state of nature, Rawls strips away our self interest. Human beings, he argues, tend to have a plan for their "perfect" societies. In this case, they can have no plan because they do not know where they will end up in society. I think a good illustrative example of the idea of having a "plan" for one's own role in society is found in Plato. When Plato places the philosopher as ruler, he is actually placing himself (as a philosopher) at the top of the heap! One wonders what his opinion of the perfect society might be if he was not an extremely educated and intelligent individual with "gold" in his soul. If Plato had been a member of the "bronze" or "iron" class, he may have come up with a view of the ideal state and society might have been quite a bit different from the one he comes up with in the Republic. From the idea of the Veil of Ignorance, Rawls comes up with the "Max-Min Rule" (also known as the "Difference Principle"). This is also based on an assumption about human nature found especially in economics where the goal is to maximize utility: that is, we want to maximize what will be good about our position in society and minimize what will be bad about it. Since under the Veil of Ignorance a person has no idea where they will end up in society (they could turn out to be anyone from the millionaire ball player to the menta

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2514
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)