Political Philosophy: The Just Society by Jack Wadham, The University of Sheffield

Jack’s aim is to introduce students to an interesting way of thinking about political justice. The idea, developed by Rawls, is that when people normally think about what a fair society should look like, they are biased by their own self-interest. Rawls proposes a way of avoiding such bias.

We are to imagine we are about to die and be reincarnated as a newborn baby in a new society. And we don’t know whether we will be born rich or poor, male or female, and so on. But before we are born into this society, we get to decide how the society is to be structured. We get to decide how the legal system works, how the government works, how resources are distributed and so on. The idea is that in this imaginary situation, the rational person would choose a society organised in a fair way, because it is in the own interest to do so. For example, they would not design a society in which laws discriminated on the basis of race, gender etc. because for all they know, this might lead to a situation in which they are discriminated against.

Jack will explore this idea and its implications by introducing students to the basic idea, then allowing them to work in groups to answer a series of specific questions about how they would structure their imagined society.

Suitable for: Year 12

Preparation/Pre-reading: There is no preparation/pre-reading required.