The Veil Of Ignorance: A useful concept for explaining inequality?

[ForkfulOfTabouleh]

I just came across the concept of "the veil of ignorance" last night on a programme as part of BBC4s justice series.

" It is a method of determining the morality of a certain issue (e.g. slavery) based upon the following principle: imagine that societal roles were completely re-fashioned and redistributed, and that from behind the veil of ignorance, one does not know what role they will be reassigned. Only then can one truly consider the morality of an issue. For example, whites in the southern United States, pre-Civil War, did indeed condone slavery, but they most likely would not have done so had there been a re-fashioning of society so that they would not know whether they would be the ones enslaved."

It occurred to me that this is a useful argument to use for many feminist causes:

i.e. lap danciing clubs - to blokes who find it a "laugh" to go to them. Roll the dice and either they end up as someone visiting lap dancing clubs or suddenly it is their daughter dancing in those clubs - do they still think it's a "laugh".

[dizietsma]

Are you doing DD203 too Prolesworth?

[ForkfulOfTabouleh]

Hmm when DH and I wer watching it last night on iplayer over dinner we were saying "oh maybe we are watching an OU course!".

Did you bring feminism into the essay?

[bucaneve]

Ooh Rawls was always one of my fave philosophers at university. For anyone that's interested Susan Moller Okin did a nice feminist critique of Rawls in 'Justice, Gender and the Family' I seem to remember doing an essay about it. At least I think so anyway, I forgot about 99% of my degree as soon as I walked out of my last final :)