John Rawls
DEDICATION: Episode EF45 is dedicated to John Rawls, a philosopher known for his theories testing the plausibility of liberal society becoming a place of equal fairness and opportunity, despite the diversity of worldviews that society encompasses. His Original Position thought experiment provides a key understanding how any individual would behave when faced with the reality of social inequality made personal.
In this brilliant mental mind-bender, Rawls’ first covers you with his concept of a Veil of Ignorance. If you were to be dropped into a new society with no possibility of knowing in advance where exactly you’d fall in that hierarchy — rich, poor, sick, healthy, black, white, smart, or ignorant, etc — what kind of society would you want to enter? It’s not surprising that this scenario is the great equalizer when luck has left the building.
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