NU Splash Biography

This class will teach you about perhaps the most important text in contemporary political philosophy: John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. In the beginning of this book, Rawls sets up a special procedure that is supposed to guarantee that the folks who get together to start a government will design a society that everybody will find fair. Briefly, the procedure requires that the participants go behind a “Veil of Ignorance” for their deliberations. When you’re behind the Veil of Ignorance, you know nothing about yourself, your friends and family, or your preferences. Rawls believes that if the folks trying to set up a government are robbed of this information, then whatever society they set up will be fair for anybody who ends up in that society. The goal of this class is to investigate Rawls’ theory—is the Veil of Ignorance a good way to achieve a just society?—but also to test it out! In this class, we will put ourselves behind the Veil of Ignorance and see what kind of government we think would be fair for a society to adopt. Then we will compare our results to Rawls’. I recommend this course for anyone who has anything to say about politics!