Original position

This choice is made from behind a "veil of ignorance", which prevents them from knowing their ethnicity, social status, gender, and (crucially in Rawls's formulation) their or anyone else's ideas of how to lead a good life.

[1] In Rawls's theory the original position plays the same role that the "state of nature" does in the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.

[2] However, the same thought experiment had already been described earlier in social choice by William Vickrey[3] and John Harsanyi,[4][5] who independently derived proofs showing a rational observer in the original position would adopt a utilitarian framework.

For example, in the Lockean state of nature, the parties agree to establish a civil society in which the government has limited powers and the duty to protect the persons and property of citizens.

[14] In Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Robert Nozick argues that, while the original position may be the just starting point, any inequalities derived from that distribution by means of free exchange are equally just, and that any re-distributive tax is an infringement on people's liberty.

[18] In How to Make Good Decisions and Be Right All the Time (2008), Iain King argues that people in the original position should not be risk-averse, leading them to adopt the Help Principle (help someone if your help is worth more to them than it is to you) rather than maximin.

Faced with the high stakes of such ignorance, careful egoism effectively becomes altruism by minimizing/sharing risk through social safety nets and other means such as insurance.

A visual depiction of philosopher John Rawls's hypothetical veil of ignorance. Citizens making choices about their society are asked to make them from an "original position" of equality (left) behind a "veil of ignorance" (wall, center) , without knowing what gender, race, abilities, tastes, wealth, or position in society they will have (right) . Rawls claims this will cause them to choose "fair" policies. As noted elsewhere in this article, philosopher and law professor Harold Anthony Lloyd argues that such a veil of ignorance is real rather than hypothetical and drives the thoughtful egoist to degrees of altruism.