Ahh the "Veil of Ignorance!" Rawls was a bit muddled on how to formulate the rules, Theory of Justice has two "tracks" for getting to the rules and he wasnt very consistent with either one. He used both the Veil and intuitionist arguments to formulate the rules, and arguably both are unsatisfactory. Rawls was attacked from all sides on the veil, he practically started a cottage industry of journal publications on the topic. My main problem with the concept itself, is that I do not agree that principles of justice are derived from considerations of concensus. Second, as you noted, the foundation principles of a society can not be formulated from a metaphysical fiction that divorces the actors from all context.
I agree that Rawls wanted to justify a moderate liberal welfare state, a "safety net." The way in which he formulated that idea, however, leads to justifying quite unseemly and unforeseen consequences. As a matter of fact, his own theory ends up convicting itself on Rawls' own critique of utilitarianism, it fails to respect the person. Nozick and Simmons, amonst others, hammered Theory of Justice quite hard on these discrepencies. Another philosopher whose name Ive forgotten (been three years since I studied the topic) wrote an entire book drawing the logical conclusions of Rawls' theory, and came to the conclusion that it leads to tyranny. Rawls' conception of the person itself is a key ingredient to that conclusion. Sort of the Nietszchean "Last Man." ;)
He made an admirable, if flawed, attempt to justify liberal conceptions of justice. However I do not agree that social justice is served by egalitarianism, which is one conclusion he tried to drag out of Kant (people dont "deserve" their natural gifts). I agree that it is necessary to maintain a "safety net" but not in the interest of serving the Last Man. I agree more along the lines of Loren Lomasky that a safety net is necessary to maintain the interest of the unfortunate in staying in the moral community, and preventing a breakdown in the fragile reciprocal relationship of rights. Milton Friedman, by the way, makes some interesting practical suggestions on this topic in the way of negative income taxes, like the earned income tax credit. Interesting stuff. |
