veil of ignorance
Imagine you’re an angel. God tells you to build a society, one that you’ll eventually be born into. Catch is, you won’t get to choose who you’ll be born as. If your society has classes, you’re just as likely to be born rich as to be born poor.
The best society is one we’d build as this angel.
You’d never build a society with slavery, since you’d be unsure if you’d be born as a slavemaster or a slave.
- I like the veil of ignorance as a heuristic for utilitarian calculations.
- The veil still doesn’t solve issues of the moral community. A slavemaster might believe that their slaves are subhuman, and that the veil doesn’t include them as humans they could be born as
