The Circumstances of Justice

These are the empirical addition to Rawls' construction of the Original Position. Here, "the circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary." (TJ, 109) Rawls has cribbed them from David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature and the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. They include, 1. many individuals occupy the same physical territory, 2. individuals are roughly similar in physical and mental powers, 3. vulnerable to attack, 4. possess a shared condition of moderate scarcity.

Rawls adds that for these persons in the original position, given initial natural limits on the circumstances of social life, it will become apparent that "mutual advantageous cooperation among them is possible". That mutually advantageous cooperation is the metaphysical posit, the regulative ideal of Rawls' social constructivism. A theory of justice stabilizes the principle and keeps the permissable forms of social life within the bounds of a responsible egalitarian liberty.

Let's hope he is right.