Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.26362/20220103

Justice and practical reason: Rationality, reasonableness, and thought-experimenting in Rawls

Nenad Miščević ; University of Maribor, Department of Philosophy, Koroška cesta 160, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia

Abstract

Rawls’s central work, A Theory of Justice, is famously built around a thought experiment, the famous Original Position. It continues the tradition of hypothetical understanding of the social contract, enriching it with a new methodological tool, the introduction of the Veil of Ignorance. The Veil, the central thought experiment of Rawls’s work, finely illustrates the road from merely instrumental rationality to the higher level, characterized by Rawls as “reasonableness”. Rawls is here quite consistent throughout half a century of his reflections. Here we propose the reading in terms of layers–degrees of rationality in the wide sense, that is, the reading in terms of the reasonable and the rational in the narrow sense.

Keywords

John Rawls; Veil of Ignorance; Original Position; thought experiments; rationality; reasonableness

Hrčak ID:

279141

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/279141

Publication date:

14.6.2022.

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