Nathan Key

One of my favorite Philosophical / Political theories is the famous Original Position thought experiment by John Rawls. In his book A Theory of Justice, Rawls postulates that if we were able to remove ourselves from time for a moment and create a perfect society- we'd have to place ourselves under a veil of ignorance where those of us creating the society would not know what role we would end up playing in the society that was being formed.

His point is this: If we didn't know what role we'd eventually play in society, in an effort to protect ourselves from poverty or oppression, we'd want to incorporate basic human dignity and civil rights into all levels of humankind- just in case we ended up at the bottom, as the poorest of the poor.

And since we don't live with the ability to actually go through with that sort of thought experiment, the next best thing is to pretend that it were possibly and then extend to those at the bottom of the totem pole those rights and privileges that we'd bestow on ourselves if we were in their place.

Some questions to consider:

1. What are the rights & privileges that you think all people deserve, no matter what position they're in?

2. Do you think some people are entitled to (or allowed) more than other people in society? Why or why not?

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