Abstract

The concept of a hypothetical original position for deliberating about moral principles, as advanced by John Rawls, is a powerful abstraction of the kind of social setting needed in order to derive normatively compelling moral principles. While this concept plays a crucial role in Rawls' theory of justice, it is also independent of it. It is possible to adopt the original position approach without following Rawls in other respects. In particular, one may disagree with the "difference principle" argued for by Rawls and still retain the original position as the starting point of alternative theories of justice.

In his recent contribution to the subject of distributive justice, Robert Nozick notes: "Political philosophers now must either work within Rawls' theory or explain why not." Indeed, after presenting convincing arguments for the legitimacy of an entitlement view of justice in his discussion of distributive justice, Nozick moves to a detailed criticism of Rawls' theory. Although Nozick's criticism of Rawls covers a number of substantial areas, his most fundamental methodological disagreement with Rawls for present purposes is best explained by the following statement: "Since no glimmer of entitlement principles is built into the structure of the situation of persons in the original position, there is no way these principles could be selected; and, Rawls' construction is incapable in principle of yielding them." According to Nozick, if any entitlement theory of justice is correct, then Rawls' construction of the original position must be defective since it is unable, in principle, to yield such a theory.

I intend to show that this particular criticism by Nozick is incorrect. Indeed, this Article will demonstrate that arguments from the viewpoint of the original position can be of significant help in the formulation of entitlement principles. Moreover, the ambiguities surrounding Nozick's discussion of the principle of acquisition are overcome in a natural manner when this principle is considered in the context of the original position. Thus, far from being inconsistent with the entitlement view, the original position setting seems to have the same crucial importance in formulating entitlement theories as it probably should have in any discussion of distributive justice.

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