Rawls's device: choose a society before you know who you will be in it. A higher percent leans toward protecting the worst off and locking in basic liberties.
About this test
John Rawls's veil of ignorance, in A Theory of Justice, asks what principles you would pick if you did not know your talents, class, or conception of the good. He argued you would secure equal basic liberties and then allow inequalities only when they help the least advantaged (the difference principle). Harsanyi used a similar veil to defend average utility instead. Nozick objected that a veil which redistributes holdings ignores how holdings were produced. These items are original. A high score is a Rawlsian lean, not a certificate of justice.
Question 1 of 11
What this test asks
Behind a veil, I would lock in liberties I could live with even in the worst social position.
I would rather raise the floor for the worst off than maximize the average, if I might be the person on the floor.
I would gamble on a society with a fabulous top and a miserable bottom if the average were higher.
Talent is not, by itself, a moral deed that settles what share of a society a person should command.
People who produce more simply own the larger share, and a veil should not second-guess that.
An inequality is easier to accept when it improves the situation of the least well off.
I would protect freedom of conscience even if a majority faith made the average person happier.
If I knew I would be talented, I would reject the constraints of the veil.
A just society is one I could still endorse if I opened my eyes in a disadvantaged life.
Justice is whatever falls out of free exchanges. A veil adds nothing.
I take the perspective of the person who loses the birth lottery, not only the person who wins it.
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