Foundations of a Nonideal Theory of Justice

Abstract:     
This paper systematically extends John Rawls' original position to nonideal theory, showing how parties to a "nonideal original position" ought to prioritize four "nonideal primary goods" over Rawls' principles and priority relations, and then agree to five lexically ordered principles of nonideal theory for distributing those goods. Finally, these five principles are shown to fare very well in reflective equilibrium, cohering with a number of pretheoretic moral intuitions.

working papers series