How Does John Rawls Use The Veil Of Ignorance

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harm to society. In, Development of Freedom, Amartya Sen explains the idea of capability and opportunity. He uses examples of how social norms and stigmas of established by social powers as well as the influence of legal powers in different societies can either benefit or harm the individual in the respective societies. Sen uses the example of the different amounts of poverty and malnutrition in countries in accordance to income. In sub-Saharan Africa, the mean income is higher than that of India, however the amount extent of poverty and malnutrition is higher than that of India (Sen, pg.99). This mainly due to both legal and social injustice in Africa and justice in India, as Sen states Africa is “self sufficient in food”, but India is “self-sufficient …show more content…

His theories are found on the basis of liberty and freedom, two feature that Rawls believed was missing from the concept of utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill. First is his Veil of Ignorance, Rawls believed that under unknown conditions; people will always choose a society that is fair. For majority this is the type of society that people also want work towards creating. Because under the Veil of Ignorance, individuals do not know what society they are placed in, people must hope for the best worse case position (The School of Life). So, under Rawls view legal and social justice can be achieved. This can be done so because Rawls’s theory provides a means for society to try and achieve a version of just society. Rawls believes there are flaws in equality in society, as he states, “all social values-liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect-are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone's advantage, Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all.” (Rawls. pg.54). A society that does not provide equal opportunity at wealth and public office is not just. Societies should have commitments at achieving so. When this is done, according to Rawls, then a society can be called

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