The Veil Of Ignorance: John Rawls Conception Of Justice

Is the hypothetical contract behind a veil of ignorance a convincing way of understanding justice? John Rawls uses this idea as a procedure for devising the most preferable principles of justice that would allow for the harmonious coexistence of the diverse competing interests in the society. He conceives justice as fairness and views the society as a fair system of cooperation amongst individuals who are presumably free and equal (Sandel, 2007, p. 113). In such as setup, justice is the outcome of political negotiations as opposed to being the work of some moral impulses or metaphysical intuition. As a political process, the members of a society must accept the agreed principles of justice as being fair through democratic processes such as representation.
Rawls’ conception of justice is largely hypothetical and hardly simulates a real life scenario. He assumes that the development of principles that are both fair and reflective of the actual justice is only possible if stripped of egoistic tendencies and done behind the veil of ignorance. Therefore, such an exercise calls for or requires procedures that are not only pure, but also not contaminated by hazardous arbitrariness
John Rawls in this regard points out that in the state of the original position, no party cannot and must not necessarily get all that one wants. He recognizes the existences of many options in the understanding of justice afforded by various doctrines. However, he emphasizes that the contracting parties struggle to strike a compromise in which case they believe that what is best for all of them is for the outcome to be the result of their joint concerted efforts (Sandel, 2007. p.