The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon

The four-stage sequence (TJ 171–176) is the procedure through which Rawls’s conception of social justice is made progressively determinate, so as to be applied to the speciic circumstances of a given society.

Justice as fairness is based on the idea that the appropriate principles of justice are those which would be agreed to in a situation that is itself fair (TJ 11). In the irst stage of the sequence, the basic features of such a situation are conceived: the parties are to choose principles of justice in the original position, namely under (1) conditions of freedom and equality, and (2) the veil of ignorance, which prevents each party from knowing, among other things, her place in society, natural talents, conception of the good, and speciic features of the society in question. Rawls argues that the parties, so situated, would select the two principles of justice.

The irst stage of the sequence, namely the original position proper, constitutes the kernel of justice as fairness as we know it. However, the principles devised in it are not suficiently determinate to yield recommendations for a speciic society. In order to know which institutions and policies will best serve the principles of justice, we must tailor their general content to the particular conditions of a given society. For that to be possible, more information must feed into the deliberative process. Thus, whereas the condition of freedom and equality holds throughout the process, the veil of ignorance is gradually thinned (or lifted), so as to enable the parties to work out the institutional implications of the two principles. The entire process, however, must unfold within public reason – that is to say, the parties justify proposals to one another using premises and standards that all citizens in a pluralistic society may reasonably endorse, rather than controversial views about what is ultimately true or of value.