Rawls’ Cake — Justice as Fairness

Rawl’s Principles of Justice Explained.

John Rawls is a famous American philosopher who is well known for his book A Theory of Justice. Rawls published this book in 1971 and spent the rest of his life answering objections, and reviewing his theory, until his death in 2002. In this article, I will try to explain in lay terms both Rawl’s original position or veil of ignorance, and his two principles of justice. In order to illustrate this position, I will use a cake metaphor. My hope is that this will help make Rawls easier to understand to the casual reader, and maybe entertain the knowledgeable reader.

A Theory of Justice is about, yes, you guessed it, justice. Rawls’ version of justice is what he calls “justice as fairness.” What does that mean? A basic notion of fairness would be, if everyone puts in the same, they should get the same out. Imagine we are in a baking club, and we want to bake a cake. Each member of the baking club brings an exactly equal share of the ingredients. We bake the cake together. When the time comes to divide the cake, the “fair” solution is that everyone gets the same amount.

In a complex society, things are not so straightforward. We do not all bring the exact same things to the table, and our starting points are not equal either. But if things are this complex, how will we create a fair society? This is…