Ever been in the middle of an Ethics Bowl round, heard a team or judge mention “Rawls” or the “Veil of Ignorance” and thought, “Who? What?”
Think of Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance (aka Original Position) thought experiment as an extension of Kant’s Categorical Imperative, and Kant’s Categorical Imperative as an extension of the Golden Rule. Neither equates to treating others the way they’d like to be treated. But thinking of them in these ways is smart because that’s how Rawls and Kant thought of them.
All three (Golden Rule, Categorical Imperative, Veil of Ignorance) share a commitment to treating like cases alike, and recognition that there’s nothing special about our perspective that privileges our personal interests. And despite the unnecessarily intimidating names, they’re basically ways to reduce bias by imagining ourselves in others’ shoes. That’s it – fancy names, but ultimately simple (and intuitively sound) concepts.
However, alluding to the Veil of Ignorance’s connections with related moral principles isn’t telling you how it works. For that, I offer brief clips from two of my audiobooks.
First, from the Involving Your Audience chapter of The Best Public Speaking Book click here, and second, from the Third Parties chapter of Abortion Ethics in a Nutshell click here. Enjoy!