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I want to get in a point here. One way to see the Original Position is as a situation that embodies certain beliefs about justice that are shared in our culture (or at least widely accepted). To accomplish this, the veil of ignorance does not allow the parties to know whether they are white or black, men or women, rich or poor, and so on. This embodies the idea that race and gender are irrelevant to considerations of justice.

Now I may agree that race and gender are irrelevant. That's beside the point. The point is that it isn't clear that Rawls ever offers any evidence about what these widespread beliefs are. On the face of it, they are just some assumptions that he accepts and he thinks his readers will accept.

The upshot is that what we have here is an Original Position -- and a whole theory of justice -- based on the moral intuitions of Professor John Rawls. The philosopher R. M. Hare, to whom Ann referred, has pointed out that Rawls repeatedly uses his own moral intuitions without argument. Over and over again he says things like "we think," "we are confident," "it seems reasonable to suppose" and so on. But it isn't at all clear that the assumptions of a Harvard University professor and his typical reader are widely shared by Americans.

If we went out and asked Americans chosen at random, most of them would say that justice has something to do with the will of God. Where is God in the Original Position? He's absent. But why?