Original Position:

Using a thought experiment Rawl's  called "the original  position"  from which agents behind  a  "veil  of  ignorance" select principles of justice  to  govern the society. Two principles serve to organise society, are  the  "liberty principle" and  the  "difference  principle." He  rooted  the  original position  in  and extended  the  concept  of  "social  contract" previously espoused  by  Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke, which made the principles of justice the object of  the contract-binding members of society together.

According to Rawls, a society is a cooperative venture between free and equal persons for the purpose of mutual advantage. Cooperation among members makes life better because of  the "primay goods" which include among others: health, rights, income and  the social bases of self-respect. All  social primary goods  -  liberty  and  opportunity, income and wealth, and  the  bases of self- respect - are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favored.

The problem  every society must confront, Rawls noted,  is  that  the members will often disagree  on  what constitutes the  good  and how  the  benefits  and burdens within society will be distributed among its members. Some believe, for example, that  the good  consists  in  virtuous conduct while others believe that the good is discovered in the pursuit of individual happiness, at least in so far as the members of society define these terms. Some members believe that an individual's merit should determine how one would participate in  society's benefits while others believe that society must provide  the  least advantaged extra assistance so that they will be able to share equally in society's benefits.

If society is to exist and to endure despite these and other such differences, its members must derive a consensus regarding what minimally constitutes the good. What consensus requires in actual practice is that the members agree upon the rules which will govern them as a society and that these rules will be applied consistently.  But,  Rawls asked, just  how would  a society and  its members know what constitutes a "fair"  principle? And, how would  it  be possible  to determine what  is  "reasonable"  for every member to agree with? Thompson cites the example of welfare to make this point: The growth of the welfare state has often been  explained and defended as a progressive recognition that government should provide certain benefits (positive rights) in order to prevent certain harms to citizens (negative rights).