> > >What is the Veil of Ignorance?
>
> > It's a very attractive idea, one that has dominated modern political
> > philosophy for the 30 years since the publication of A Theory of
>Justice,
> > and it is certainly deep and extraordinarily rich. I think it is wrong,
>but
> > wrong the way the great philosophical ideas are wrong.
> >
> > jks
> >
>
>What you described sounds like humanism via
>"negative capability." Since we have no
>preconception of the "value" of the other, we must
>perforce grant them the humanity we grant
>ourselves. A new (old?) twist on the categorical
>imperative (and thus we get back to Habermas).
>But what is it that you think is wrong with the
>idea? Is it the negative construction? True
>humanism would consist not in blindness to the
>other but in recognition of their actual real
>human needs?
>
>
It certainly is an attempt to capture a Kantian ethic, although--please note!--it applies not to evaluation of individual actions but to "the basic structure of society," the fundamental social institutions like markets or planning and other institutions of economic coordination, the family, the kind (though not the details) of the constitution and the legal system, and the like.
I think there are lots of things wrong with it. In Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice, I explored one basic problem. The problem is this. Suppose we go into the "original position," which the the veil of ignorance + the knowledge we are allowed to have (the general facts about the way societies work, basic facts about human nature, etc.) and the motivational assumptions, what R calls the "thin theoey of the good," our desire for more ratherthan less freedom, opportunity and wealth. We reason and produce principles of justice. These forbid, e,g., the exercise of despotic and arbitrary power (violing equal extensive freedom) or obscene wealth that hurts rather than harms the least well off.
Then we come out of the OP, and lo! we are in the bourgeoisie or the nomenklatura. Our principles of justice tell us we must give up our wealth and power. Is there any great likelihood taht we will be of justice. This is, I take it, a basic sociological fact about human beings. It is also elementary historical materialism. Rawls has designed the OP to abstract from the things that divide us, but when we factor those things back in we cannot expect people to be motivated by the principles chosen in the OP.
Why should we care? Well, Rawls cares. He is worried about stability. He acknowledges that if principles of justice cannot motivate us, they are no good. He deals with the problems I have indicated in two ways: (1) he says the the PJs only apply in a "well ordered society" where the divisions among people are no so great that they can be expectedto abide by them. Well, that's obviously question begging. (2) he says that if we are not in such a situation we can use coercion to impose the correct PJs on the unbelievers. That's question begging to: they unbelievers will feel the same way. So I don't think the theory works.
jks
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