Rawls defines political constructivism as a view about the content and structure of justice as fairness. According to political constructivism, once reflective equilibrium is reached, “the
principles of political justice (content) may be represented as the outcome of a certain procedure of construction (structure)” (PL 89-90). This procedure of construction is modeled by the
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original position in which rational agents, as representatives of real individuals, and subject to
restraints of the veil of ignorance, select two principles of justice to regulate the basic structure of their society. Thus, the guiding idea of Rawls’s constructivism is that the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the object of the original agreement (TJ 10).
For Rawls the original position corresponds to the state of nature in the traditional theory of the social contract. As he famously puts, the original position generalizes and carries to a higher order of abstraction the traditional theory of the social contract as represented by Locke, Rousseau, and Kant (TJ xviii). Among the essential features of the original position is that no one knows his place in society, his class or social status, his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and so on. Furthermore the parties do not know their conceptions of the good—their comprehensive doctrines— or their special psychological propensities. The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This is designed to make sure that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or social circumstances. Since all parties are similarly situated and no one is able to promote principles to favor his particular condition, the principles of justice as fairness, Rawls argues, are the result of a quite fair bargain. Given the symmetry of parties’ relations to
each other, this initial situation is fair between individuals as moral persons (TJ 11).
The original position is introduced as a very useful device to elaborate a political conception of justice for the basic structure from the idea of society as a fair system of cooperation between persons regarded as free and equal (PL26). The original position models the fair conditions under which the representatives of “free and equal citizens”—or as we will argue
reasonable persons— are to specify the terms of social cooperation in the case of the basic structure of a democratic society. Via the veil of ignorance it models the reasonable restrictions
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on reasons available to the parties for favoring one political conception for justice over another. As we will see, the idea of the original position presumes particular conceptions of society and person. Furthermore, the conditions imposed on the parties along with the description of their deliberations model rationality and reasonableness of individuals.
The parties who represent real persons in the original position are depicted as rationally autonomous, and thus free to agree to whatever principles of justice they think most to the advantage of their trustees (PL 75). The rational individual who is modeled in the original position is regarded as free within the limits of political justice to pursue her conception of the good. The parties in the original position select those principles of justice which secure the primary goods—the goods which are essential to realize the higher order interests of the person for whom each party acts as a representative—more than others. The primary goods include the basic rights and liberties, freedom of movement, and free choice of occupation protected by fair equality of opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect. Rawls assumes that reasonable and rational persons care about their basic liberties and opportunities in order to develop and exercise their moral powers and pursue their conception of the good (PL 77).
Furthermore, free and equal citizens are considered as fully autonomous by the original position. This full autonomy is modeled by how parties are situated with respect to one another in the original position and by the limits on the information to which their deliberations are subject via the veil of ignorance. We should consider that it is not the artificial parties who inhabit our device of representation but real reasonable persons in their public life that are assumed to be fully autonomous. The original position models those individuals who, as fully autonomous49, comply with the principles of justice in their political conduct and publicly
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recognize the application of those principles in constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice. Full autonomy “is realized by citizens when they act from principles of justice that
specify the fair terms of cooperation they would give to themselves when fairly represented as free and equal persons” (PL 77). Full political autonomy as represented in the original position is
distinct from moral autonomy as a purely ethical value. In contrast to the full political autonomy as a value of political life in political liberalism, full moral autonomy, as expressed by the comprehensive liberalisms of Kant and Mill, may apply to the whole of human life, both social and individual. Justice as fairness emphasizes this contrast, affirming political autonomy for all citizens but leaving the weight of ethical autonomy to be decided by several individuals in light of their comprehensive doctrines (PL 78).
Later Rawls emphasizes that the original position does not suppose a particular metaphysical conception of the person. The veil of ignorance “has no specific metaphysical
implications concerning the nature of the self” (PL 27). Indeed, one of the main communitarian objections to the constructivist argument Rawls develops in his TJ has been that Rawls’s characterization of the person in the original position is biased and would contest Rawls’s claim
that his original position is equally valuable to all ways of life. Communitarian and some other critiques claimed that the original position reflects a western, metaphysically liberal understanding of “human life” which is incompatible with some religious and communal values.
For example, Sandel argued that the original position “introduces assumptions that are not universally shared, that it is implicated too deeply in the contingent preferences of, say, Western liberal bourgeois life plans” (Sandel, Limits 127). Sandel argued that the original position
exemplifies a prior commitment to a metaphysically liberal conception of the person. He concluded that the original position’s account of the ‘deontological self,’ embodying a
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conception of liberal autonomy, is controversial from the point of non-liberal ways of life. This liberal conception of the person contradicts and rules out alternative intersubjective, social or communal accounts of the self and its relationship to its ends and the broader community. Sandel claimed that ‘implicit in Rawls’s theory of justice is a conception of the moral subject. . . .Rawls’
main discussion tends to take the nature of the moral subject as given and argue through the original position to the principles of justice” (Sandel, Limits 49). 50
According to Rawls Sandel’s critique is mostly a misunderstanding of the original
position as device of representation. We may enter the original position as a device of representation at any time “simply by reasoning for principles of justice in accordance with the
enumerated restrictions on information” (PL 27). While doing so our reasoning no more commits us to a particular metaphysical conception of person and self than one’s acting a part in play, for
example of Macbeth or Lady Macbeth, commits her to really being a king or a queen engaged in a desperate struggle for political power, as William Shakespeare’s play exemplifies (PL 27). What we do in the original position is simply to show how the idea of society as a fair system of social cooperation and citizens as free and equal can be elaborated so as to find principles specifying the most appropriate principles of justice to regulate the basic structure of a democratic regime.
Many misunderstanding of the original position are the outcome of confusions between the three views which were referred in the previous chapter. In chapter II we saw that Rawls importantly distinguishes between three points of views: “that of the parties in the original
50 See Michael. J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge University Press, 1982. In PL 27 n
Rawls finds Will Kymlicka’s answer to Sandel in chapter 4 of his book as one of the best liberal answers to the
communitarian objection on the notion of the self, if formulated in a political way. See Will Kymlicka, Liberalism,
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position [v1], that of citizens in a well-ordered society[v2], and finally, that of ourselves—of you and me who are elaborating justice as fairness and examining it as a political conception of justice [v3].” (PL 28) In chapter II we argued that the reflective equilibrium is mainly concerned with v3. In KCMP Rawls calls v1 and v2 as “model conceptions” (KCMP 533). Here we need to
add that the original position deals with v1 and v2.
V1 or the parties who determine the fair terms of social cooperation are simply artificial inhabitants of the original position as a device of representation. Original position is set up me and you, as reasonable individuals, to conjecture the most reasonable political conception. The nature of the parties (v1) is up to us (v3) who are involved in the reflective equilibrium. Distinguishing between v1 in one hand and v2 and v3 on the other hand demonstrates that the original position attributes no account of the moral psychology to actual reasonable persons. (PL 28) In contrast to v2 and v3, v1 does not exist in the external world at all. It is only an inhabitant of our minds as part of a thought experiment. V1 simply models v2 (and thus v3). In the rest of this chapter I will argue that v2 are individuals with reasonable comprehensive doctrines, no matter in which society they live. Put in other words, v1 demonstrate how individuals with reasonable comprehensive doctrines (v2) may formulate a constructivist argument for justice as fairness.