id	author	title	date	pages	extension	mime	words	sentences	flesch	summary	cache	txt
en-wikipedia-org-127		Original position - Wikipedia			.html	text/html	1834	204	62	The original position (OP), often referred to as the veil of ignorance, is a thought experiment developed by American philosopher John Rawls to discover the principles that should structure a society of free, equal and moral people.[1][2] Rawls claims that his Principles of Justice would be chosen by parties in the original position.[3] In Rawls's theory the original position plays the same role that the "state of nature" does in the social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke. John Harsanyi helped to formalize the concept in economics,[5][6] and argued that it provides an argument in favor of utilitarianism rather than an argument for a social contract, as rational agents consider expected outcomes, not maximin outcomes or the worst-case outcomes.[3] Harsanyi argued that a person in the original position would maximize their expected utility, rather than choosing minimax. Rawls argues that the representative parties in the original position would select two principles of justice:	./cache/en-wikipedia-org-127.html	./txt/en-wikipedia-org-127.txt