Most ethics bowl teams are familiar with the four dominant ethical theories: Kantianism, Utilitarianism, Care Ethics and Virtue Ethics. Sometimes you’ll hear mention of a political philosophy such as Libertarianism. And there’s rumor that a team once tried to base a case analysis on the work of Hegel (not advised!).
However, John Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance / Original Position is a viable, underused approach (far more viable than anything to do with Hegel). It’s especially useful when a team first begins analyzing a case or as a double-check against latent bias as competition nears. How does it work?
Here’s an excerpt from Abortion Ethics in a Nutshell: A Pro-Both Tour of the Moral Arguments where I introduce the approach. Note that Rawls considered it an extension of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, and Kant considered his Categorical Imperative an extension of the Golden Rule. So if this feels faintly like treating others the way they’d like to be treated, it kinda is – an innovative way to imagine yourself in multiple others’ shoes. Enjoy!
Abortion Ethics in a Nutshell Chapter 10: Third Parties
Whether wealthy or broke, healthy or sick, gay or straight, people tend to prefer policies that benefit them personally. Even when we try to be objective, rich black men wind up preferring policies that advantage rich black men. Working-class whites wind up preferring policies that benefit working-class whites.
This presents a problem. Our conclusions are supposed to be the product of logic, not power. However, what if there were a way to transcend our clouding biases?
The Golden Veil
Out of the corner of your eye you spot a luxurious gold curtain floating in mid-air. Across the top reads a mysterious Lord of the Rings-style inscription. It’s not written in a recognizable language. But somehow you know it says, “Veil of Ignorance.”
Curious, you pull it aside and step past. A flash of light dims to a soft glow. You know you were just reading about abortion ethics. But you can’t remember where you were. In fact, you can’t remember much of anything about yourself—your name, race, gender, income, occupation, education, religious commitments, political allegiances, handicaps, talents, hobbies, passions, phobias. Not even your favorite flavor of ice cream.
Holding up a hand to inspect your skin color, you can only see a shade of gray. Feeling your body to determine your sex, your brain won’t say.
Dumbfounded, yet oddly at peace, you see that I’ve followed you. We both admit an overwhelming desire to discuss abortion. But we can’t remember if we’re generally for or against it, what our family and colleagues expect us to think about it or how we ourselves might be impacted by it.
You suggest that we revisit the Rate That Abortion exercise. We do, and while we’re happy with our scores, they’re definitely different than before.
We discuss the nature of the conception, the mother’s interests, the UDH’s value, the child’s quality of life and the father’s autonomy. On some level, we want our conclusions to benefit us personally. But blocked from knowing who we are, we’re prevented from gaming the analysis in our favor.
Recognizing that personal preferences should have no bearing on morality, we agree that whatever we decide behind this magic golden veil should govern our views when we return to the real world. We know that we may not like what we’ve decided here. But we shake hands nonetheless, promising to promote whatever conclusions we’ve drawn from this enlightened perspective.
20th century American political philosopher John Rawls designed this “Original Position” thought experiment as a sort of reasoning machine.[1] Issues go in, more objective than usual answers come out. His primary focus was the basic structure of society, or what a nation’s constitution would ideally guarantee. But the method can be applied to any issue, including abortion.
I’ll save the full exposition of Rawls for Political Philosophy in a Nutshell (forthcoming 2025, maybe?).The idea here is to offer his approach as a supplement. If you didn’t know if you were male or female, Republican or Democrat, Baptist or Agnostic, rape victim or expecting father, how might your analyses change?
In fact, how might your analyses change if you didn’t know if you were an impacted third party? Everyone’s interests should matter some. The question is, how much?
Give Rawls’s approach a try as you consider (and reconsider) ethics bowl cases. We all have our biases, and there’s no way to root them out completely. But imagining what we might think if we could scrub them away can get us closer to an objective perspective. Desk copies of the book are free for educators — just ask. And if a 20-minute lecture vid would help, click here.
[1] Rawls wrote several books, but for a thirty-page synopsis see his “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Summer, 1985) pages 223-251. Or find my twenty-minute lecture vid on Sandel’s Justice: Chapter 6 at youtube.com/MattDeatonPhD