Justice As Fairness-A Study Of The Original Position

As a representative contemporary political-philosopher,Rawls differs from his previous political philosopher in that he not only pays attention to the issue of human freedom,but also introduces the concept of equality.Combining the "natural position" of classical contractarianism,he constructed the starting point of his thought experiment-the original position.Based on the viewpoint of the original position,Rawls inferred "justice as fairness" in his work "A Theory of Justice".Rawls consider why contractors are to cooperate,this is because that the environment with moderately lacked resources is not enough to meet everyone's development plannings,and the contractors are unable to change the environment.In order to allocate limited resources reasonably to make everyone maximally satisfied,and for the realization of their plans,the way of distributing benefits determines whether the contract is just.Rawls believes that in this environment,to ensure the fairness of the contract,we must exclude the factors that influence the fairness of the contract,such as the social status and physical quality etc.And he proposed the theory of curtain of ignorance for this aim.Finally,his aim is to meet the basic interests of rational people as contractors,and at the same time to establish the principles of rational human nature,which are two principles of justice in Rawls,in line with their freedom and equality.Then based on these two principles,a standard of justice and fairness of the social system is established.How to ensure that the social system we have established based on these two principles is fair and just? So we must consider that,in the theory of original position proposed by Rawls,how the two basic principles of Rawls are chosen by people and why do people choose two principles of justice rather than the principles of the previous justice theories? When people choose principles of justice,what are their requirements for the principles,and what are the rules that we follow in our choosing.How these requirements guarantee our benefits and ensure that we are able to act in aself-disciplined manner.These are all factors that determine what kind of justice view we will ultimately choose.Contractors will think that the society based on these two principles is fair and just because they have chosen what they want to achieve when they choose.Based on the balance of reflection and Kant's moral theory,Rawls provided a theoretical justification of his original position and the two principles.From the original position,we can lead to the idea of primary goods,the principle of justice,and the balance of reflection which run through Rawls' entire system of justice.So the research of the original position is the stepping stone of Rawls's theory.