A Rawlsian Defence Of Veganism
John Rawls was arguably the most important political theorist of the 20th century. His most famous work within his Theory of Justice is that of the original position, better known as the veil of ignorance. The veil of ignorance rests upon the belief that no individual has truly earned their successes, regardless of how success is defined. The position argues that all that we are is a combination of our genetics or environment, neither of which are any of our own doing. In other words, the nature vs nurture argument is redundant because ultimately both variables are randomly allocated to an individual at birth. After all, your genetics and your socio-economic background are nothing which you earned, and if these are the primary factors which influence successful outcomes, one cannot truly take personal responsibility for success - they are merely chance. This can be taken a step further through the hard determinist argument that on top of these factors, there is not even the slightest element of personal freedom involved in shaping one's own actions and resultant outcomes.
Even if this hard determinist addition is rejected, Rawls’ argument is difficult to argue against even if it challenges neoliberal ideas of individualism and the workmanship ideal. From this position, the next question becomes how to create a fair society. For Rawls, the answer is to imagine that you are shaping a world in which you are to be born. However, you do not know who you will be or where you will be born. You might be a wealthy, white male born in Sweden where you have access to free education, healthcare and strong public transportation networks, educated parents living in a luxury apartment without a need to worry about your basic needs. You might be also be female born into the Philippine slums, begging for food and water, without access to education or healthcare, trafficked into the sex trade at a young age. Your task is to distribute resources in a way so that you would be happy to be born as anyone in the world and thus the focus should be upon those who are most negatively affected by current inequalities.
The exact nature of this potential redistributive nature has been debated extensively and will likely be made the subject of a different blog post. Regardless of one’s political opinions and willingness to make assumptions about interpersonal comparisons of utility, the codification of basic rights is something that all should be in favour of if it is accepted that society’s primary obligation is towards those being most negatively affected by inequalities. For example, the argument that Uyghur Muslims should not be subject to China’s genocidal policies needn’t require discussions of redistribution. As basic as it sounds, it is important to acknowledge that by simply not killing an individual on the basis of something as arbitrary as the race which they happen to be born into, you begin to level the opportunities and subsequent utility of those who are born into the aforementioned race.
Protesters campaigning against Uyghur genocide. The extension of basic rights to all groups of individuals is necessary in creating a just and fair starting position.
The same belief that one could be born as a different race, gender, sexuality and socio-economic class which should result in the strongest defence of individual rights, even if not redistributive action, must accept that existence is not confined to being born as a privileged human, an oppressed human or a human in between these extremes. There is a possibility that we are born as a different species. In fact, the likelihood that a highly sentient being is born as a human being rather than a cow, pig, chicken, fish or other farmed animal is mathematically improbable due to the sheer numbers of animals that humans breed into existence to kill shortly after. The creation of a just world, and the rights which follow from this desire, must therefore be applied to those who suffer the most from the current organisation of rights, or lack thereof, even if they are non-human animals.
Dead chickens. Beings bred and killed for human consumption who you and I could have been.
The argument of equal moral consideration sufficiently explains that although it would be absurd to grant animals rights such as the right to own property or the right to vote, the most fundamental right to live without undue pain and suffering must be upheld. This is true through both utilitarian and Rawlsian lenses. The existence of other animals which you or I could have easily been, and the reality of their extreme suffering should be good enough reasons to campaign for the codification and enforcement of basic protective rights. Rawlsian thought therefore mandates individual, and later socially enforced, veganism.
