The “original position” is the name Rawls gives to the central formal device in his argument for the two principles of justice within the conception of justice he calls “justice as fairness.” It is perhaps the most well-known part of Rawls’s theory, and not surprisingly, the one over which there has been the most disagreement amongst his readers and commentators. This entry provides an overview of the original position’s place within Rawls’s overall project, discusses its various elements and their justification, and provides a summary of the argument from the original position to the two principles of justice.

Rawls aims to present a conception of justice that could serve as a more appropriate basis for a democratic society than utilitarianism. Such a conception must be able to be justified to our fellow citizens, and so must rest on an argument whose premises and presuppositions we share with them. Rawls came to describe one form of such argument as constructivist. The basic idea of a constructivist argument is that it models the main elements of a concept, a particular conception of which one is trying to defend. An argument is then made that the favored conception would be generated by the model, and so it follows from an interpretation of the basic concept that can be made good to one’s fellow citizens. Within such an argument for justice as fairness, the original position is meant to model the main elements of a concept of justice. Since the argument is designed to work out a conception of justice that can serve as an appropriate basis for a democratic society, the concept of justice the original position is meant to model is in various ways shaped by this fact. The argument is thus designed to appeal to citizens of a democratic society who are trying to work out together a conception of democratic justice they can share.